The anniversary of Colonel Cecil Cruikshank's old action was kept at the Manor as it had been kept for years: the mess silver down from its baize, the curry sent up at the proper interval, the toasts to absent friends drunk standing, and the ladies withdrawing at half past nine to the small drawing-room, where the fire was good.
Among those at the table was Cousin R. Nobody at Cruikshank Manor could account for him. He had no surname anyone had ever obtained. He collected what he learned about people and had never once been known to ask anything for it. He was there because he orbited the Colonel, and the Colonel's manners forbade him to enquire why; to have asked would have been rude, and the Colonel was a martinet of ferocious propriety, which is a different thing from a martinet of ferocious curiosity.
Cousin R said nothing at all to anyone through the soup, nothing through the fish, nothing through the toasts. Then, over the curry, he turned to Nan and observed, in front of the whole table, that she had a remarkable memory for other people's timetables, and that he had lately begun keeping a note of hers. Nan received this as she received everything. The dish went round. Somebody proposed absent friends again.
Nan Pringle has lived at the Manor these nine years on the Colonel's charity, without wages. She carries his post up from the lodge, keeps his engagement book, and has the run of the morning-room, where his writing-case stands. She had sat at the foot of the table all evening, and afterwards nobody could recall a single word she had spoken before Cousin R spoke to her. She has never been heard to raise her voice, nor known to quarrel, nor seen to strike anything. Twice in nine years matters at the Manor have been set right by the Colonel's temper falling on the right man at the right hour, and on both occasions Nan was somewhere else.
A little after eleven o'clock, Cousin R was found in the gun-room, laid across the hearthrug where he had fallen. He had been struck down with the regimental sabre taken from the hall trophy, and the sabre lay beside him. The room was otherwise undisturbed: nothing arranged, nothing posed, nothing set out. That sabre had hung on the hall trophy the whole evening, in plain view of every guest who passed to dinner. Standing over the body, the sabre at his feet, was the Colonel, in a rage he made no attempt whatever to conceal, saying only that the man had had it coming.
On the gun-room table lay a single sheet of the Manor's own writing-paper, unfolded. It read: "Gun-room, eleven o'clock. I have something of your wife's you will want to hear." It was unsigned, and the hand was a plain copperplate, of the sort taught to every schoolgirl of the last thirty years. The Colonel's wife was lost abroad in a manner he has never once described. It is the single subject upon which he cannot be spoken to, and it is why Lady Lavinia Loveless is paid to sit at the Manor every Friday.
In the pocket of Cousin R's coat was a second sheet, the same Manor paper, the same plain copperplate: "Gun-room, eleven o'clock. Come alone. What you have been watching has been watching you."
His pocket-book was on him, untouched. It held a folded slip on which he had written, some days before, three lines in his own hand: "N. counts the plate she does not own." "N. reads letters left face-down." "N. watches Z. and thinks no one watches her."
The Colonel's writing-case in the morning-room stood open, its paper disarranged and its blotter freshly turned. Mrs Sib Gow, the housekeeper, had set that case in order at six o'clock and swore the blotter had been clean. Mrs Gow keeps the belowstairs book and can say to the quarter-hour where every servant was; she has never been known to be wrong, and the family do not trouble to doubt her. The gun-room door has no lock, and stands at the foot of the back stair, which the household uses and the guests do not.
The Colonel had been at the head of his own table until the port, then in the morning-room over the regimental book from half past ten, and then, on being summoned by a note he found under his door, in the gun-room at eleven o'clock, where the household came upon him.
Nan had withdrawn with the ladies at half past nine and was said to have gone up early with a headache. Mrs Gow saw her on the back stair at a quarter to eleven, going down with a candle, and did not think it worth remarking. Nan is in love with Zane Swain, the footman, and has told no one; she has kept a note of his half-days in the back of the Colonel's engagement book for four years.
The rest of the company were disposed as follows. Xerxes, the nabob, over from Hartfield House for the toasts — blithe, closeted, and a poor sleeper — was at cards in the billiard-room with Wat and Quill from ten o'clock until the discovery, all three vouching for one another, with Zane bringing the tray. Wat, invited because the mess port comes ashore in his boat, prices every man he meets and had never found a price on Cousin R; he did not leave the table. Quill, physician and coroner, who dines at the Manor for the port and had been troubled for months by Cousin R's illegibility, did not leave it either.
Fifi was in the kitchen passage with Mrs Gow from half past ten, scalding the curry pans, until the body was found; her whole safety lies in not being looked at. Her twin Zane, a rule-abider who keeps what he is told, carried trays between the billiard-room and the pantry from ten o'clock and was seen at both ends of that errand by Mrs Gow and by the card-players at every quarter.
Lavinia withdrew with the ladies at half past nine and remained in the small drawing-room, where Mrs Gow brought coals at a quarter to eleven and again at eleven, finding her both times at the fire. She survives by governing what others see, and Cousin R had never once been governed. Effie, the Colonel's heir-presumptive, bright above and indebted beneath, withdrew with the ladies and then went out to the terrace to smoke; the coachman and the lodge-keeper both had her under their eyes from ten o'clock, walking the gravel, until the house was roused. Aziz, who came with Xerxes, in the fez he has worn since Morocco, left the table with a headache at ten o'clock and sat in the Colonel's conservatory, where Mrs Gow passed him three times with coals and trays between ten and eleven; he cannot read a watcher's intent and is uneasy when he cannot. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt was not at the Manor at all, being at his vigil in the chapel-house in Cairnholm, with the sexton and two parishioners in attendance until dawn.
By morning the sabre was back on its hooks in the hall and the trophy straightened, and Nan Pringle stood at the foot of the back stair with the Colonel's engagement book under her arm, waiting to be told what the household would like her to do next.