Rain came off the firth in sheets that Friday night in the autumn of 1884, and the storm, having nothing better to do, put water into the gas service line beneath the area steps of Cruikshank Manor. The supply drowned. Every jet in every room died together at 9:20 — not dim, not flickering, but all at once and altogether, and the men from the gas works not to be looked for before morning.
Lady Lavinia Loveless had come, as she comes each Friday, to sit for the Colonel's late wife in the green drawing-room, and the sitting was still in progress when the light failed.
At 9:15 Mrs Sib Gow had sent Fifi up to the study to gather Cousin R's books and shelve them in the library, the study being wanted clear for the morning, when the Colonel meant to go over a shipping contract there. It was a five-minute errand and Fifi went willingly. At 9:40, the books not having come down, Mrs Gow went up with a candle.
Fifi lay on the library floor, between the study door and the shelves. She had been strangled from behind with a knotted cord, and the cord was still about her neck. There had been no fall and no struggle to speak of. The room had been in total darkness when she died; no lamp burned there, and Mrs Gow's candle was the first light in it since the gas drowned.
She was wearing a gentleman's hat: a low black felt, a man's, set square upon her head, as she wore one always off duty — the household had long since stopped remarking upon it. She had been standing, with her back to the study door, and the hat was still on her head when she was found.
Beside her lay four volumes spilled from her arms, Cousin R's property, which he had left about the study for a fortnight: a Ruskin and three of Hakluyt's voyages.
The cord was not household twine. It was of ecclesiastical make — plaited flax, with seven hard knots at intervals along it and a small ring at one end: the sort of discipline a man wears under his coat, and not a thing to be bought in Cairnholm.
Of the house that evening the following may be set down.
The Colonel had a footman on the front door and Mrs Gow at the back all evening, and no one came in or went out between 8:30 and the discovery. Colonel Cecil Cruikshank himself sat in the green drawing-room from 8:45, a regimental man for whom the maid's hats and her callers had been a standing affront, and who knew she heard more of his house than she ought; when the gas drowned he stayed in his chair and was still in it, cursing, when Mrs Gow came for candles at 9:30. Lavinia keeps him there, and so does Quill. On his left sat Nan, his poor relation, resident on his charity, who detested the maid for wearing her brother's exact face, for being wanted, for being free, and who dreaded what such a mouth might repeat; she was holding Lavinia's hand in the circle, and when the dark came she did not let go, and both Lavinia and the Colonel say so. Lavinia sat at the table with her hands held on both sides from 8:45 until the candles came at 9:30, and she has her own reasons to fear a loose-tongued lady's-maid.
In the business-room from 8:50 sat Captain Wat Frew, who calls upon the Colonel about freight and who buys and sells the household's talk — the maid was a source he valued; with him Xerxes Hartfield, at the Manor on freight business, whom the maid had lately taken to propositioning on the landing, and who found it tiresome and no more; and with Xerxes his companion Aziz, watchful of anything that might touch his household, his fez set aside upon the lading account. The three sat in the dark a quarter-hour after the gas failed, unwilling to grope about, and came out together at 9:35 when candles were brought.
In the billiard-room from nine were Cousin R, the unplaceable guest who orbits the Colonel and collects what he hears, and whose books were the reason Fifi was on the stair at all; and Effie Strange, the Colonel's heir-presumptive, come for cards and to be seen, bright, sleepless, and short of money. When the gas went, Cousin R struck a match and they played out the frame by candle until after ten. Effie says so, and a footman says so.
Dr Tobias Quill, physician and coroner, a frequent and timid guest who had always been visibly and hopelessly taken with the maid, was called down to the servants' hall at 9:05 and stayed past 9:45. Mrs Gow passed the door twice.
He had been called down to Zane. Zane Swain, the footman, is Fifi's twin: the same face, the same height and build. He had gone down at 9:05 with a violent rash upon face and arms from a dish of shellfish, and Quill sat with him below until near ten. He came up the back stair at 9:50, blotched and apologetic, when the house was already candlelit and the body already found. The twins were born Swann and took the name Swain on coming to Cairnholm; belowstairs they are simply the twins, and are told apart chiefly by dress.
The Reverend Simeon Gaunt, Free Kirk minister and Lavinia's half-brother, had not set foot in Cruikshank Manor since Easter. He holds necromancy an abomination and says so, and he holds the Friday sittings a traffic with devils; he had never troubled to hide his disgust for the maid — the hats, the airs, the men on the back stairs. He wrote to his half-sister that he would come at half past eight to walk her home through the storm, and he came. Arriving at 8:30, he would not enter the drawing-room while the sitting ran. He waited in the hall, and when the light failed he was somewhere between the hall and the stair-head. Nobody vouches for him between 9:20 and 9:40.
Two small matters, of no evident weight, belong to the record. Some weeks since, Zane went into the small vestry room at St Kentigern's with a message and came out again at once, having found the Reverend at a private devotion. Zane is no theologian and does not carry tales; he mentioned it to nobody except, in passing and as a mere oddity, to his sister, thinking it no great matter. And Fifi kept her brother's affairs close — whatever else she told, she never told his. That silence was famous belowstairs and much resented above.
Mrs Gow, who keeps the belowstairs book and misses nothing, states that Fifi did nothing that evening out of the ordinary. She carried the tea in, mended a cuff, took her supper below, and was sent up on the errand. No caller, no drink, no quarrel, no scene.
Mrs Gow states one thing further. Coming through the hall with candles at 9:50, she saw the Reverend at the stair-head see Zane come up from the doctor's. The Reverend went white to the lips and took hold of a chair-back to steady himself, and did not speak for some moments.
Candles burned in every sconce, the gas dead until morning, and the storm still at the windows. On the library floor the four volumes lay where they had fallen, the black felt hat beside them; and at the stair-head the Reverend Gaunt had not yet let go of the chair-back, looking down at the footman on the stairs.