It rained upon Cairnholm all that Sunday in the winter of 1884, and the household of Cruikshank Manor came back from the morning service at St Ninian's damp about the hems and hungry, and sat down in the long dining room to dinner in three courses.
There were more at table than usual. Xerxes had come up on business of a venture with the Colonel and had been kept to dinner, with Aziz at his right, the fez set as neatly as a full stop; Aziz has dined at the Manor four times this winter at Xerxes Hartfield's side and has never once left the table before the port. Captain Wat Frew, who had come after church on a matter of freight, was let in by the Colonel's man at 6:40 and did not go out again. Lavinia sat at the Colonel's left. Quill was there for the Colonel's port, Cousin R for reasons he did not offer, Effie because she is the heir-presumptive and has lately been much in want of ready money, and Nan because she has lived at Cruikshank Manor for twenty years upon gentry blood and no money at all. Fifi waited at table, as she does on Sundays. Zane poured at the sideboard.
Nan left the table at 8:05. She said only that she wished a word with the Colonel before the port. She did not come back. The company remarked the empty chair and did not remark the hour, which is the ordinary way of empty chairs.
She was found at 8:20 in the back passage between the dining room and the service stair, lying face down some six feet from the green baize door. She had been struck once from behind, on the back of the head, and died at once; there was no other mark upon her. Her dress was not disordered and nothing was taken from her person. Her black cotton gloves were still on her hands, buttoned, as she had worn them at church that morning and had not troubled to take off at table.
The back passage has no lamp of its own. It is lit by whatever light consents to come through the baize door, and by nothing else. The gas bracket at the dining-room end had been turned down to a bead at some point during dinner, and stood so, a small blue seed of flame, when the body was found. It is the practice of the staff to turn it down on carrying nights, to spare the mantle. Sunday is a carrying night, and Fifi and Zane both had the doing of it.
Two feet from Nan's hand lay the brass door-porter, the weight kept for holding the baize door open when dishes are carried. Mrs Sib Gow, the Colonel's housekeeper, said it had stood in its proper place at the stair foot when she passed at 7:30.
Beneath her, folded, lay a half-sheet of the Colonel's own notepaper, written over in Nan's hand: three dates in November, a Thursday hour, and the words "the blue room, both of them, and F. carrying the note." The initial F. is written twice. On Sunday morning at St Ninian's she had been seen to fold a half-sheet of the Colonel's notepaper into her glove during the sermon. Fifi sat in the servants' pew directly behind her.
On the shelf above where she fell sat a man's hat, black felt of common make, belonging to no one in the house. Mrs Gow said it had been there since Friday, left by a tradesman, and that she had meant to send it back.
The rest of the hour is a tidy thing, and the tidier for being told by so many mouths. Fifi went down to the kitchen at 8:05 to fetch the second remove and reappeared in the dining room at 8:14 with the dish. Zane remained at the sideboard through the whole of that interval, pouring, and was seen there continuously by four of the company. Mrs Gow, however, was in the kitchen the whole of the dinner hour, and swears that Fifi did not come down the service stair between 8:05 and 8:14; the second remove was fetched instead by the kitchen girl and handed up at the top of the stair. Mrs Gow keeps that stair in her eye from the kitchen table, and nothing goes up or down it in the dinner hour without her knowing.
Quill went out to the hall lavatory at 8:02 and was met returning at 8:07 by Cousin R, who had stepped out for the cigar case; the two came back into the dining room together and were remarked upon for it. Lavinia sat at the Colonel's left throughout and did not rise from her chair between the soup and the discovery — the Colonel, who is deaf on that side and therefore watches her mouth when she speaks, confirms it. The Colonel himself was called out to the gun-room at 8:03 by his man, over a cabinet lock that had jammed, and was there in the man's company until the cry went up. Effie left the table at 8:10 and was found at 8:20 in the morning room by the maid who ran for help, asleep in a chair with the decanter beside her; the maid had passed the morning room at 8:12 and seen her there already.
As to why anyone should mind Nan at all. It was her habit to know the belowstairs hours better than the housekeeper, and she kept a little book of who came and went. On Saturday she told Mrs Gow that she meant to speak to the Colonel after Sunday dinner about a matter belowstairs; that it could not wait another week; and that it would cost two people their places. She named nobody.
Fifi and Zane were taken on at the Manor without character six years ago. They have neither family nor references beyond the Colonel's, and a dismissal from this house would leave them with nothing whatever to show. The Colonel's reference is the entire fortune of the Swains. He dismissed a kitchen maid in October for a lesser irregularity, and refused her a character.
On Thursday last, in the blue room, Lavinia was alone with Zane for the better part of an hour, the door shut. Nan passed along that corridor twice. Lavinia has of late been uneasy in company and short with the servants; Zane is a rule-abider who dreads the loss of the Colonel's reference; and the household has lately whispered.
The other threads are shorter. Nan is co-claimant with Effie upon the Colonel's estate, a fact the Colonel enjoys mentioning and neither woman has ever discussed. Quill has attended Nan for her chest these four winters and calls her the only sensible woman in Cairnholm. Wat has twice tried to buy from her what she knew of the Manor's comings and goings, and been twice refused; he calls her a poor mark and pays her no further mind. Cousin R has never in six years addressed a word to her, nor she to him, and has been heard to observe that there is nothing in her to look at. Gaunt was at Cairnholm gaol from six o'clock that evening, sitting with a condemned man until midnight, and never came near the Manor; the prison chaplain and two warders vouch for the whole of the hours. The Colonel had barely troubled to notice his poor relation in twenty years, and did not seem certain, afterwards, which relation she had been.
The port was not served. The company sat on in the long dining room with the dishes going cold, and were, on the whole, more inconvenienced than appalled.
The brass door-porter stands again at the foot of the service stair, polished, holding nothing open; and above it, on the shelf, a black felt hat that belongs to nobody in the house waits to be sent back.