Wayfarer's Fortune lodging is a temporary refuge for Anna Wetherell and a key setting in the chain of events surrounding the deed of gift. On the morning of March 20, the document was brought there to be shown to her; accounts given later at court made the lodging a point of connection between Anna’s claim and Cowell Devlin’s discovery of the signature.

A Place to Wait

Anna comes to the lodging needing somewhere to stay until five o’clock. Edgar Clinch welcomes her into his office and offers tea and biscuits, greeting her warmly before asking where she is going later and where her mistress is. When Anna says she has an appointment at the Courthouse, Clinch’s welcome gives way to anxiety: he asks whether she has been summoned or is to be tried. The exchange establishes the lodging as a private stopping place immediately adjacent, in the sequence of her day, to a consequential public appointment.

The Deed Arrives

In her later testimony, Anna recalls that on the morning of March 20 the gaol-house chaplain brought the deed of gift to Wayfarer's Fortune lodging to show her. She says she then took it straight to the Courthouse, where John Fellowes confirmed that it was a legal and binding document and might give her a claim to the fortune. Fellowes agreed to take the deed to the bank on her behalf and arranged to meet her again at five. Anna says that when she returned, she fainted. The lodging is thus the first place in this account where the document is presented to her, before its legal significance is discussed elsewhere.

A Disputed Signature

Cowell Devlin also places the deed at Wayfarer's Fortune lodging on the morning of March 20. He says that he took it to Anna after they had been discussing other matters, and that during their conversation he first noticed it had acquired a signature. Devlin denies seeing Anna sign it. The difference between noticing a signature and witnessing its creation leaves the lodging tied to an unresolved question about the document’s signing, rather than providing direct proof of who signed it.

Narrative Significance

The lodging’s importance lies in this overlap of refuge and evidence. Anna comes there seeking a few hours’ shelter, while the deed’s appearance and newly noticed signature place the same rooms within the dispute over her possible inheritance. Because Anna and Devlin describe the document’s presence there from different positions, the setting anchors competing accounts without resolving the central evidentiary gap.