Every Sunday evening the company gathered at Cruikshank Manor to sit with Colonel Cecil Cruikshank's late wife, and every Sunday the household kept its tidy order before dinner: the port set out, the medium's table dressed, the candles lit against the coming dark. This particular Sunday preserved that order in nearly every particular. The single exception was Nan Pringle.
She was found seated at the séance table in the drawing-room, quite still, a small cordial glass at her right hand. There was no mark upon her, and nothing in the room was overturned. She had the composed look of a woman who had merely declined to continue the evening.
The glass held a sweet blackcurrant cordial, which was hers alone; the household knew she took no wine, and drank her cordial at the evening table by long custom. A physician's later examination found dissolved in it a measured quantity of a sleeping draught — a quantity, the examination noted, far past any dose that might be meant for rest.
Dr Tobias Quill, who attends the Colonel socially and serves the district as coroner, happened to be present at the séance, and it fell to him to pronounce her. He had taken his port at the sideboard beforehand, as was his habit, and had sat at the table with the rest.
Upon that same sideboard, among the port things, stood a brown apothecary's vial, stoppered and near empty. Its printed label named a chloral sleeping draught, dispensed by Dr Quill to Xerxes Hartfield for his insomnia — the very draught, as it happened, that Xerxes had complained openly of losing from his coat some days before.
The arrangement of glasses repaid a moment's attention. A fresh bottle of the cordial stood open on the sideboard, and two glasses of it had been poured and set out early, before the company assembled — within reach of anyone who took port there beforehand. Only one had been drunk. Its twin waited, untouched, where it had been placed.
Among Nan's things lay a folded half-written letter to the Colonel, in her own hand, breaking off mid-sentence. It set down, plainly and without ornament, several private matters of the household she had lately observed — among them a physician's habit she had grown certain of, a thing she wrote she 'could no longer keep to herself, even for an old friend.' Earlier that day Nan and Dr Quill had been seen walking the manor garden together, quite at ease, as two who had long known one another; a footman remarked that they spoke of a village they had both known as children.
It should be recorded, for the sake of completeness, that Nan was a poor relation kept at the manor, and that the household named her alongside Effie Strange in the Colonel's expectations — the two, it was said, who might inherit. Dr Quill, for his part, was accounted a nervous and easily frightened man, and by common agreement the ablest hand with a draught in Cairnholm.
The company that evening was numerous, and each of its members may be placed. The Colonel received his guests and sat at the head of the séance table throughout; Mrs Gow and the assembled company set him in the drawing-room from the first gathering of the party. Xerxes had arrived in the late afternoon on business, and was closeted with the Colonel in the study until the company assembled, then joined the table; Mrs Gow vouches he did not go near the sideboard alone. Aziz, Xerxes's companion, came with him and remained in the small parlour over tea, in the housekeeper's sight, until the séance was called, joining the table late.
Lady Lavinia Loveless, the medium engaged for the occasion, was dressing the table and arranging her instruments in full view of the arriving guests, and did not leave the drawing-room after her arrival. Cousin R, that unplaceable guest who orbits the Colonel, sat at the table across from Nan, and had been in the room from before the cordial was poured.
Effie had driven out to the town in the afternoon on an errand of her own, returning only as the séance was ending, her carriage and its hour vouched by the coachman and Mrs Gow. Below stairs, Zane Swain kept the door and the hall, receiving guests, never entering the drawing-room but to announce, and never handling the cordial, per Mrs Gow; his sister Fifi Swain was likewise about the corridors and below stairs on the evening's service, out of the drawing-room until the discovery. Captain Wat Frew called at the manor after dark on business of his own, and was kept waiting in the hall by Zane, unadmitted to the drawing-room when the discovery was made. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt kept to his own parish that Sunday and did not come at all; the parish accounts for his evening.
The cordial glass stands at Nan's right hand, one of a pair poured and set out early; its twin, untouched, waits on the sideboard beside a near-empty brown vial and the decanter of port, while the séance candles burn down over an unfinished letter.