For one evening the great dining room at Hartfield House was surrendered entirely to Aziz, and it became for the space of a night a room in Morocco. Lamps of pierced brass threw their little constellations upon the ceiling; the guests were put down among low cushions, which several of them managed with more dignity than others; and the dishes that came up were Aziz's own, in his own order, with his own hand at the pouring. Xerxes Hartfield, who is ordinarily the sun of that house and knows it, consented to be a planet for the evening. The household orbited Aziz instead, and appeared to find the arrangement agreeable.
Mabel, Xerxes's cheetah, lay the whole dinner at the low table among the cushions, fed by hand from the Moorish dishes, and was watched by half the room with the frank attention that a cheetah in a dining room commands.
The music and the noise of the Moorish table filled the whole ground floor from the soup to the sweets.
It was a little after the party rose from the cushions that Captain Wat Frew — the smuggler who runs Xerxes Hartfield's cargo up the coast — was found in the gun room, seated in the wing chair, quite dead. He had been shot once. A single ball, and the man arranged in the chair no otherwise than a man sits down in a chair. Dr Tobias Quill, who is also the city coroner and therefore had only to walk across the hall to begin his official duties, set the death within the half-hour before the party rose.
There was nothing about it that anyone had troubled to improve. Nothing was staged, posed, or arranged: no penitent props, no seaman's knot, no composed tableau. A plain chair, a plain man, one shot.
The gun room opens off the main hall, a few steps from the dining room. Its door stood ajar and the rack unlocked, as it is on any ordinary night, and the whole company knew the pistols hung there. The rack holds a quantity of sporting pieces; one fowling piece and one of the duelling pistols from the cased pair on the wall had lately been handled, though the house has the general run of that rack and always has. One spent ball. One report, heard by no one over the music and the clatter of the Moorish table.
Upon Wat's person was found a fat oilskin pocketbook, being a collection of other people's secrets, kept as a chandler keeps his accounts. It had been opened that very day at a fresh page, and upon that page stood a column of initials against sums, several already inked. The last entry stopped in the middle of a word.
Among the inked initials: a figure against C. A figure against L. A figure against E. And, heavier than the rest and twice underscored, a sum against X, with a second line written beneath it reading only "or it goes to press Friday."
Wat had lately grown greedy and loud, pressing his patrons harder than a careful blackmailer should, and had begun to speak of "going to print" if he were not paid. He was, besides, a networked man: his death is a nuisance to everyone who needs the cargo run, and a very obvious loss to lay at the one door everyone would name first.
Of those who might have been asked to account for themselves, several were spared the trouble. Fifi and Zane — the maid Fenella Swain and the footman Zane Swain — passed the whole night at Cruikshank Manor across the water, abed and vouched for by that household; neither was at Hartfield House at all. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt, Lavinia's half-brother, and Cousin R had both sent word that they would not come, and both were accounted for elsewhere in the city.
That left the cushions and the rooms adjoining.
Xerxes was host of the evening in the sense that a man is host who has given his dining room away. He was seen at the cushions early, in the best of tempers; then he stepped out, it is said, to see to the wine, and was gone for a stretch during the music, returning before the party rose. He took the news of the Captain's removal with an unhurried good humour that struck one or two of the guests as remarkable in a man who had just lost his cargo-runner. He sleeps badly, and takes a draught from Dr Quill for it.
Aziz did not leave his own table once. He sat at its head from the first dish to the last, carving and pouring, and the assembled guests and the servants bringing courses all say so. He is devoted to Xerxes past all measure, and is generally allowed to be the one man in that house who would answer any threat to Xerxes without a blink.
Colonel Cecil Cruikshank had come on a matter of a shipping venture, blustered a good deal about propriety, and withdrew to the billiard room with Nan Pringle and a decanter from the fish course, the two of them remaining there until the party rose and each vouching for the other. His initials, with a sum, stand inked upon the fresh page.
Lady Lavinia Loveless, the medium, who is resident in the house, gave a short sitting for three guests in the small drawing room through the music. The sitters were present throughout, and the door was in view of the hall footman. She works by intimacy and never by a brought weapon. Her initials, with a sum, stand upon the page.
Effie Strange, the bright young thing and heir-presumptive to Colonel Cruikshank, was at the cushions for the earlier courses, then took ill and was put to lie down by the housekeeper's girl, who sat with her until the party rose. She was deep in debt to Wat, who supplied her opium. Her initials, with a sum, stand upon the page.
The lamps still burned low over the cushions, and the Moorish dishes went cold where they stood, and Mabel drowsed among them. Down the hall the gun room was quiet, the cased pistols one short, and the fat pocketbook lay open on Wat's knee at a page that stops in the middle of a word.