Summary. It was Effie Strange, and for no love at all — for the two things he had that week put his hand to take from her; here is how I came to it.

The Reckoning. The sherbet on the saucer was the whole of the method. Gaunt would take no glass from a hand, and so his portion had to be marked and made up apart, on the tray Effie herself carried out of the pantry at half past nine, having gone in on the pretext of a headache and a cup of water. The house laudanum, full a fortnight since and near empty at eleven, went into that one glass and no other. He drank it after the sweets in the smoking room, as was his habit, and grew quiet where he sat. Somewhere between twenty minutes to eleven and five minutes past, a person in a pale gown was seen to pass the watching servants and go in to him, and did not come out again until Aziz opened the door at twenty past. There was no struggle, no mark, nothing disturbed — a cushion pressed down upon an insensible man, and his hands folded after, which is not cruelty so much as tidiness. That composure is itself a kind of signature, though not the sort the household was looking for.

Lavinia wore black that night, and it was a pale gown that went in; she was, besides, at the table until 10:40 and on the stair at eleven under two servants' eyes, and her trust falls in to her whatever Gaunt thought of it. Xerxes never left the long room, and had in any case given up nothing that evening but the head of his own table. Aziz was seen at the fender and at the table until he went himself to fetch Gaunt, and Gaunt had never turned his notice toward the closet business, there being nothing there to turn toward. Quill sat in company the whole while and was the one who pronounced the death, which a guilty physician rarely troubles to do so plainly. Wat was at the area door over a bill of lading, vouched by a boatman, and Gaunt had no quarrel with cargoes in any case, holding smuggling the excise's business and not his own. Cousin R sat in the library with the door standing open on the hall, in view of the clearing servants, and a smothering that leaves no penance behind is the opposite of everything he had spent a fortnight trying to draw out of the man. The Colonel and Nan Pringle were together in the business room from ten until five past eleven, vouched by the same clerk, and Gaunt had sat through the Colonel's séance in February without a word of reproof.

That left Effie, who was at table in pale grey watered silk, and who excused herself once between 10:40 and 11:05 with a complaint of the lamps. What Gaunt had said to her twice that evening across the dishes was not idle. He had, that week, laid a signed complaint against the druggist in the Bothy Wynd who made up her tincture, and pressed to have his licence taken from him; and he had written to her guardian, the Colonel, whose will stands unaltered and whose patience with a dissipated ward he had already declared exhausted. Between them the two letters closed off her medicine and her expectations in the same week, and did so in writing and in company, so that there was no mistaking his intention nor any quiet way to turn him from it. She did not kill him for old grievance, as the household first supposed of Lavinia. She killed him because he had, that week, put his hand to the two things she could not live without, and meant to be thorough about both. I put the charge to her this afternoon; she did not trouble to deny it. The third this twelvemonth, by my count, and the file may now be closed.

When all's said and counted, the deed it was done,
and Effie the answer, when answer was none.
Poor Gaunt lies quiet, a candle, a knife,
the tidiest exit from Cairnholm and life.
The lesson is here, should we trouble to learn —
but the cards, being cards, will be dealt a fresh turn.