It rained upon Cairnholm that November Sunday with the steadiness of a thing under contract, and the household came back from evening church damp about the hems and in excellent spirits. Dinner was at seven, and the dining room at Cruikshank Manor was at its fullest: the Colonel at the head, red and audible; Captain Wat Frew at his elbow with freight rates; Dr Tobias Quill, present as he is most Sundays for the Colonel's port; and beyond them the various guests whom the Colonel collects as other men collect fowling pieces.
At 8:00 the Colonel called for the second decanter, and Zane went up by the front stair to the plate cupboard on the upper landing to fetch it. He came down by the back stair, as staff do.
At a quarter past eight he was found at the foot of it, lying tidily on the flags, his salver beside him and the decanter unbroken. His neck was broken. The composure of the arrangement was much remarked upon afterwards; nothing had rolled, nothing had spilt, and there was no blood anywhere upon the stair or upon him.
Quill was fetched from the table and gave the fall as the cause, setting the death within the quarter hour before he was found. He observed two further particulars and mentioned them mildly, as a man mentions the weather: a smear of wet upon the third step from the top, and that the runner there had been rucked and afterwards smoothed back.
The back stair runs from the upper corridor, past the door of the blue guest room, down to the service passage. It is unlit between the sconces and is used chiefly by staff. The third step from the top stands directly beneath the blue room door, so that anyone leaving that room in haste steps upon it.
The blue guest room had been given for the night to Xerxes and to Aziz. Its door was found ajar. Within, a travelling case stood open, its lid thrown back — and it should be said that Xerxes travels always with a locked travelling case, which no servant is permitted to open or to carry, and which Aziz alone unstraps. At the Manor it stood in the blue room.
Upon the upper landing, near the plate cupboard, lay a folded square of paper: a page torn from a household memorandum book, on which was written in Zane's hand ‘blue room — saw — ask X alone'.
Mrs Sib Gow, the Colonel's housekeeper, had sat in the service passage at the stair foot from 7:50, mending. She saw no one pass her going up. She heard the fall and went for Dr Quill.
In Zane's coat pocket were a pressed sprig of rosemary and a note in Lavinia's hand naming Tuesday. Both were dry and undisturbed.
Of the household's disposition that evening the following was established without difficulty, the Colonel's guests being a communicative set.
The Colonel had been at the head of his own table from seven until the alarm; six people at table swear he never left his chair, and he was still calling for his port when Mrs Gow came in. He holds strong views upon the proprieties of service, and had that very morning at church called Zane the best footman in the county. Nan Pringle, the poor relation of the house, who keeps to the edges of rooms and knows the hour of every door, had been reading aloud to two elderly parishioners in the small drawing room from 7:45 until the alarm, both women having her in view throughout; she had lately been observed to walk very often past the footmen's corridor, though nobody had thought to ask her why. Wat sat beside the Colonel arguing freight rates from a quarter to eight until the alarm. Quill was at table from seven until Mrs Gow fetched him.
Xerxes, come from India with a fortune and a habit of good humour, rose from the table at 8:05, saying he wanted his cigar case from his coat, and was back in his chair by 8:15, apologising for the delay and asking whether the port had come. He was in good humour through the rest of the meal. He sleeps badly and walks the house at night, and the Colonel had told the household not to be alarmed at a candle in the corridor after ten; before dinner he had been about the house upon the venture business. The rain came in at the upper corridor window, which had been left open, and the boards there were wet from seven o'clock onward. Xerxes's shoes, examined later by nobody in particular, were dry.
Aziz was in the kitchen from 7:55 to 8:20, having his supper at the long table under Mrs Gow's eye and that of three kitchen maids. His fez — which the Colonel's guests find worth remarking upon — was found dropped upon the floor of the blue room. He said he had gone up to lay out the linen before his supper and had come down without it, not liking to go back for it while the family dined.
Lady Lavinia Loveless had been in the conservatory from 7:55, in a chair, in the company of Cousin R, who did not leave her until the alarm; each vouches for the other, and a maid passing twice with coals saw them both. Cousin R, a guest of unplaceable connection who orbits the Colonel and collects, without ever spending, what he learns, had nothing to add and added it at length.
Effie Strange, the Colonel's heir-presumptive, bright and sleepless, was out of the room from 8:02 to 8:12; she says she went to the morning room for her scent bottle, and the parlourmaid confirms finding her there twice in that span. Her debts to a Cairnholm money-lender stood at ninety pounds, and Zane, who carried the post, had twice brought her letters she took from him without a word.
Elsewhere, Gaunt had preached twice at St Mungo's that Sunday and passed the evening in the vestry with two churchwardens, who sat with him over the accounts until eleven and never left him. Fifi, housemaid at the Manor and Zane's twin, had been laid up in the attic with a fever since Friday, dosed by Dr Quill; Mrs Gow carried her broth up at eight and left her sleeping.
Certain particulars belong to the house rather than to the evening. The Colonel's venture papers required Xerxes's signature and were to be signed on the Monday morning; the Colonel had observed at dinner that a man's name, once put to a thing, cannot be unwritten. Zane was known as the model servant: he took no drink, told nothing of any house he served in, and had never in three years been reprimanded — Mrs Gow said he was the only one of them who never gossiped. His understanding with Lavinia was an open secret belowstairs and unknown above it; the Colonel, who holds strong views upon footmen and ladies, had not heard of it, nor had Gaunt, her half-brother. And Zane had never before that Sunday been given duties upon the upper floor at all, the plate cupboard having been moved to the upper landing only that week, the lower one being under repair.
The second decanter stood untouched upon the sideboard all evening, and the Colonel, who never got his port, went up to bed at midnight complaining of it.