The orchids of Hartfield House keep a short season and a warm one, and Lavinia had stoked the glasshouse well past the comfort of anyone wearing wool. Along the north bench the brass labels ran in their tidy row — Aconitum, Datura, Nerium — naming, in Latin, the several things a guest ought not to touch. Behind the label reading Nerium stood a small green bottle of the gardener's decoction, made up for the scale insects and kept stoppered as a matter of long habit. It stood unstoppered that evening. The gardener, applied to, swore he had stoppered it at six, as he did every evening of his life, and had the manner of a man who was telling the truth and resented being asked.
The conservatory was served all evening from a single tray of hock in green-stemmed glasses, set at the door and carried through by whoever happened to be passing. No glass was assigned to any guest. Xerxes stood beside the tray from 9:40, greeting the late arrivals with the ease of a man who has bought most of what he greets, and Mabel, his cheetah, lay chained by the fountain the whole evening and was fed at 10:05 by Aziz, in his fez, watched at it by half the room.
Captain Wat Frew had lately taken to sitting in the dark corner behind the orchid bench, in a hat like the footmen's, because, he said, a man in a servant's hat is not looked at twice. He wore it that night: black silk, low-crowned. Zane, the footman on duty, wore its twin, the house pattern issued to menservants for outdoor errands, and both hats had hung side by side on the conservatory peg since nine o'clock.
At 10:00 the glasshouse lamps were turned down for the orchid viewing, and the company looked at flowers in near dark for a quarter of an hour, murmuring at the pale shapes as one does. Nobody could say afterwards who had crossed the aisle. It was, several agreed, the loveliest part of the evening.
Wat was found at 11:20 in the wicker chair behind the orchid bench, quite dead and quite unmarked, his glass fallen on the tiles beside him. Quill, fetched out of the card room with his cards still in his hand, said poison — a strong dose taken in drink — and named the hour of death as near enough ten o'clock. He then washed his hands and returned the pack to the table, the game being plainly over.
A second glass, untouched and still full, stood on the ledge beneath Zane's coat, a yard from where Wat sat. Fifi had carried two glasses from the tray at 9:55; she was seen to carry two, and she set both down.
In Wat's pocket was his pocketbook, and in it a fresh page of names with sums against them. He took money for silence from half of Cairnholm and made no secret of the trade; he kept his accounts in that book and wrote a name only when he had decided to press it. The last entry was made in his own hand that day, and read: Swann — 40 gns — the boy, and not the girl.
Fifi and Zane Swain came into service at Cruikshank Manor as children, from elsewhere, and neither has ever been heard to speak of what came before. Fifi will repeat anything told her about anybody, cheerfully and at length, save only anything concerning her brother, on which she has never once been known to say a word. Three weeks ago Wat was seen twice at the parish register office at Cairnholm, and the clerk says he asked to see the baptisms of 1861 and paid to have a page copied. On the morning of the gala Wat stopped Fifi in the Cruikshank Manor passage and spoke to her for some minutes; a kitchen girl going by with a pail heard only Fifi's answer as she went: "You'll not touch him."
Of the rest of the company, the accounts are orderly. Fifi had carried glasses from the door tray from nine o'clock, went up the aisle behind the orchid bench at 9:55, and was in the dark with everybody else from 10:00. Zane, a rule-abider who said almost nothing all evening, kept the outer door until 9:50, was then sent by Lavinia to fetch her shawl from the upper landing, and was vouched for there by two maids from 9:52 to 10:12. Lavinia stood at the orchid bench through the dark quarter-hour with Effie on her arm; Effie, who had come for the orchids and stayed for the hock, was holding that arm when the lamps went down and was holding it still when they came up, by Lavinia's account and her own. Effie's laudanum comes from Wat, with a delivery due within the week and no other dealer in the city — a small inconvenience, now.
The card room offered a solid block of gentlemen. The Colonel and Cousin R sat at cards with Gaunt and Quill from 9:30 and rose only at the alarm. Gaunt had said at dinner, in front of the table, that Wat Frew was a catalogue of sin walking upright, and that he prayed nightly for the man's correction; he is unbribable, and open in his view. Quill had twice this month been asked for money by Wat and had twice refused, and said so himself, in the card room, before the body was found. Nan passed the night at Cruikshank Manor, abed and vouched for by the household, and did not come into Cairnholm at all.
The lamps were up again by then, and the orchids at their brief best, and on the peg two black silk hats hung side by side, indistinguishable in the heat.