What a Figure Says

Maître Odile Ferrière had an untidy office and a way of listening that made you want to tell her everything.

The untidiness was not carelessness. Camille understood that within ten minutes: every pile had a logic, current files on the left, cases already argued on the floor against the radiator, and in the middle of the desk a perfectly clear space the size of a sheet of paper. The rest could collapse. That space stayed empty.

She laid the ninety-one pages on it.

She read them in silence for forty minutes, while Camille looked out of the window at the inner courtyard and a plane tree losing its last leaves. Twice the telephone rang in the next room. Twice somebody answered that she was with a client.