Summary. It was Nan Pringle, and it was not for money in the small sense but for the whole of her future — here is how I came to it.

The Reckoning. The house had been made unsafe on purpose, and the person made unsafe was the person for whom the house had that morning stopped being a certainty. The Colonel had come home from his solicitor at eleven with a new will, and by soup he had told the table of it: Effie Strange residuary legatee in place of Nan Pringle, who had run the man's linen and lamps and accounts eleven years for nothing but the promise the old will held, and who now had forty pounds and no roof for her trouble. That is the whole of it, and the household book bears it out — the 1873 terms stand copied in Nan's own careful hand, kept faithfully all those years against the day they would matter. They mattered a great deal less by supper's end.

The method wants no more than an evening's quiet housekeeping. The pantry drawer is unlocked and lies off the kitchen passage, which anyone fetching the coffee tray must pass; the screwdriver in it alone bore no film of polish, which is the mark of a hand that used it and then thought to wipe it. The screws of the second stair-rod were found lying together and orderly on the landing carpet, not scattered as a fitting gives way of itself — the work of someone unhurried, not an accident. The upper landing lamp was unlit, though lighting it at dusk has been Nan's charge these four years running; on this one night, of all nights, she let it go dark. And it was Nan who told Effie her shawl waited in the blue bedroom, second door past the landing — a lie small enough to pass at table, large enough to send a girl alone up an unlit stair with a loose step waiting for her foot.

The others fall away easily enough, and I will not linger over any of them. Xerxes was gone from the house by six and dining at Hartfield by seven; the new will cost him nothing and gave him nothing, so he had no quarrel with the night's business. Fifi was at the scullery sink with Mrs Gow from a quarter past nine till the cry went up, and her grievance against Effie was extra washing-up, not injury worth a life. Zane poured the port from nine and is placed at the sideboard by five witnesses at once; a man does not first enter a stair-rod's looseness in the day-book, as he did a fortnight since, and then arrange to use it — that is a confession in advance, which killers do not commonly write. Cousin R and Lady Lavinia were both at table in full view from nine, and both had reason to want Effie living and solvent — he to paint her, come spring, and she to be paid her three guineas, which die with the girl rather than being collected. Captain Wat, sailing at dawn with his bag already in the hall, is owed eleven pounds that likewise dies unpaid with her — no creditor hastens his own loss. The Reverend Gaunt was at his vigil in St Mungo's vestry, his verger vouching for it. The Colonel himself sat at the head of his table the whole evening, and had spent that very morning making Effie his heir; a man does not sign a will in the forenoon and undo it with a stair-rod by night. And Dr Quill, who might have muddied the water with talk of the laudanum, instead told the room plainly that the bottle was untouched and the fall alone had killed her — not a man widening the case, but narrowing it, which is not the way of guilt.

I had nearly set the file down without the lamp. It seemed a small thing beside the screws and the false word about the shawl — housekeeping neglected, nothing more. But the lamp has been Nan's alone to light for four years, every evening without failure, and on the one evening a rival heir went up that stair in the dark, it stayed unlit. A woman does not forget the one duty that has never once slipped, unless she has arranged for it to fail. I have charged her accordingly, and the file goes to the sessions closed — the third such matter to cross my desk this twelvemonth, by my count, and I do not expect it to be the last from that house.

When all's said and counted, the deed it was done,
and Nan the answer, when answer was none.
Poor Effie 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.