It rained all Friday at Cairnholm, in the particular manner of November, and at nine o'clock the household of Cruikshank Manor assembled in the long gallery, as it had assembled on a Friday for two years, to hear from the late Mrs Cruikshank. Lady Lavinia Loveless took the head of the table. The Colonel took her right hand and Cousin R her left. Candles were set out with economy, for the Colonel's standing order forbids any light in the back passage between the gallery and the service stair on séance nights, the candles being wanted elsewhere and the passage being, in his view, perfectly walkable by a person who knows the house.
Nan Pringle knew the house. She had kept its book of comings and goings for nine years — the Colonel's poor relation, installed with a ledger and a pen and the office of reporting irregularities to him on Saturday mornings. At tea she had remarked to Mrs Gow that she had a hard letter to write before Saturday, and had asked, in the same breath and the same mild voice, whether the twins had any people to go to.
At 9:15 the gallery doors were shut. Mrs Sib Gow, the Colonel's housekeeper, took her chair at the service door and sat there, and saw who passed and when. At 9:18 Fifi was sent up to fetch a second shawl for Lady Lavinia, and went up the service stair under Mrs Gow's eye. At 9:20 Nan rose and went out. Her own candle-end stood cold on the gallery table; she had not troubled to take it.
She was found at 9:40 at the foot of the back passage, face down upon the drugget, struck once on the back of the head with a heavy object. She had not cried out — not so much as a syllable to interrupt Lady Lavinia, who was at that hour engaged with a spirit and disliked interruption. It was, all things considered, a very quiet way to be got rid of, and one can only be grateful that it did not disturb the sitting.
A yard from her lay the neck of a brass stair-rod, prised from the third step of the service stair. Such rods are common to every stair in the Manor, and any hand that cared to could lift one.
Over her shoulders was Fifi's grey shawl, borrowed at the stair-head. The two women are of a height; from behind, in an unlit passage, one grey shawl is much the same as another.
In her pocket was a folded half-sheet in her own hand, headed "For the Colonel, Saturday." It listed three dates in October, an initial, "S.", and, beneath them, the words "the name is not Swain."
The three dates in October were the three on which Fifi and Zane Swain had been off the premises at night without leave. As to the other matter: the twins had come to the Manor with characters written in the name Swain, whereas the parish register at Cairnholm has them as Swann. Cousin R had observed as much at table, twice, to no one in particular. The Colonel dismisses without character any servant who came to him under a false name; he turned out two in 1879, and neither found a place after.
Fifi is a housemaid who has invented for herself a small gentility and keeps it in good repair, along with her place, which she guards. Her savings — four pounds eleven — live in a tin beneath her bed, and she has twice said that she would not go back to service in a town where she was known. Mrs Gow saw her go up the service stair at 9:18 and saw her return to the gallery at 9:33, without any shawl. The second shawl Lady Lavinia had sent for was afterwards found in the linen press, still folded, untouched.
Her brother Zane, footman, a strict keeper of the house's rules, was in the pantry with Mrs Gow's tray from 9:12 to 9:40, in her sight; she rang him through the service door twice, and twice he answered.
Xerxes, the nabob, out from Hartfield House on the Colonel's venture papers, sat in the gallery from 9:00 between the Colonel and Cousin R, a poor sleeper and an easy guest, and Mrs Gow and four sitters had him in view until the doors opened at 9:35. He and Nan have for two years each held something belonging to the other, and each has said in company that the arrangement suits them both.
Cousin R held one end of the sitting-cloth from 9:15. The cloth was held taut by two hands throughout, and Lady Lavinia would not release it. He is a guest of no placeable origin who orbits the Colonel and gathers up whatever is said near him; he keeps a small ruled book of the household's oddities. He had known Nan eleven years and never once addressed her, and she does not appear in the book. He has said she is not composable.
Lady Lavinia — born Isolde Marsh, though the Manor calendar knows her otherwise — sat at the head of the table with her hands upon the cloth between Cousin R and the Colonel, from 9:15 until the doors opened at 9:35. She had for some weeks suspected that Nan knew of her meetings with Zane, and had been quite unable to discover whether Nan knew anything whatever.
Dr Quill had gone out to the porch at 9:10 to smoke with the Colonel's groom, and was still there at 9:38, when the groom brought him in to look at the body. He is a physician and coroner and a frightened man, and he took his port at the Manor twice a week; he was fond of Nan and had called her the only person in Cairnholm who never startled him. He was obliged to certify her, which he did.
Elsewhere the evening accounted for itself with tiresome thoroughness. Effie Strange and Captain Wat Frew passed it at the Cairnholm harbour rooms in the sight of a dozen men. Aziz remained at Hartfield House among the servants, his fez unremarked. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt kept his Friday vigil in the church of St Malo, watched by two churchwardens until morning.
At ten the gallery candles were still burning, the sitting-cloth lay slack where hands had left it, and a grey shawl was folded on the stair-head with nobody to claim it.