The dinner at Cruikshank Manor was given to celebrate the founding of the Cruikshank–Hartfield Coastal Venture, the new joint concern of Colonel Cecil Cruikshank and Xerxes Hartfield. The company sat the length of the long table, and Zane and Fifi served. It was understood, moreover, that the venture sealed a bond between the two houses — an arranged match between Nan and Xerxes, which the Colonel himself had brought about and pressed, and whose imminence this evening was taken to confirm.
Xerxes had brought Mabel, his cheetah, from Hartfield House, and Aziz was charged with minding her through the evening.
As the Colonel rose to give the toast, Mabel got up onto the table and put the whole room into an uproar — a long tawny length of her stepping among the candlesticks, and the guests springing back with their napkins. It was found afterward that catnip had been mixed through the salad; the herb grows in a bed in the Manor's own kitchen garden, and had been cut fresh from there that very day. While the Colonel composed himself and the commotion was got under control, everyone was in movement about the table, rising and shifting and steadying the glasses. Then all returned to their seats.
The Colonel recovered his dignity and gave the toast at last, and drank. Everyone seated drank the toast with him, poured every one from the same bottle.
Several minutes later, with everyone including Nan back in their chairs, the Colonel plopped face-first into his soup and did not rise. He was dead.
Dr Tobias Quill, who had been at the table, examined the Colonel and found poison. The bottle was tested and came back blameless; every other glass was clean. Only the Colonel's own glass had carried it — and the poison, Quill observed, did its work only after he drank, some several minutes after the toast was poured.
Nan sat nearest the head of the table, at the Colonel's hand, as she always did. She is his niece by his late wife's line and the poor relation of the house; she keeps his accounts, orders his household, and pours at his table, and depends upon him wholly for her keep. It was she alone who handled the head of the table's setting as a matter of course — she saw to the Colonel's glass and his place, unremarked, as she saw to everything under that roof. Earlier, while serving, Zane had noticed a little dirt on Nan's shoe and frowned ever so slightly; at which Nan said, unasked, that she had had to post a letter that afternoon.
The others were as they had been. Xerxes sat as co-host, up with the rest during the uproar, seated for the toast. Aziz was in full view throughout, chasing and settling Mabel. Lavinia — Lady Lavinia Loveless, the medium who holds a weekly séance for the Colonel's late wife, and is paid by him for it — rose with the company and returned. Effie Strange, the bright young thing and heir-presumptive under the Colonel's will, was up with the commotion and seated again for the toast. Cousin R, that unplaceable guest who orbits the Colonel, kept his place. Quill himself, the physician and coroner who keeps the Colonel's port, was at the board and did the examining after.
The servants gave no trouble to the question. Zane served throughout, carrying and pouring in full view; Fifi passed between board and kitchen; and Mrs Gow, the housekeeper, accounted for the belowstairs comings and goings of the two through the evening. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt was not invited and did not attend — he passed the night at his own lodging across the city, at his devotions, and was seen there. Captain Wat Frew, likewise invited, did not come; he was aboard his ship, the Wee Stot, drunk in the harbour all evening, and vouched at the quay.
The long table, then: the guests risen and murmuring, the cheetah led away; and at the head, the Colonel face-down in his cooling soup, his own glass empty beside him and every other glass on the board untouched by harm.