It rained all that Wednesday evening in Cairnholm, and Xerxes had thrown open the long gallery of Hartfield House for a viewing of his collection. The Maharaja's Sapphire lay upon its velvet stand under the lamps, and the cabinet of curiosities — locked these several years — stood open, so that the company might bend close over small valuable things and say what one says. In the vestibule, through which everybody passed, stood the elephant's-foot umbrella-stand, and among the walking-sticks two Indian sabres protruded, as they had protruded for years, and had long since ceased to be looked at.
At eleven o'clock Aziz was found in the small breakfast-room off the gallery, seated in a chair, stabbed once from the front with one of those two sabres. It lay across his knees, where it had been let fall by whoever had finished with it. The chairs about him stood in disarray; a side-table lay overturned; a Chinese bowl out of the cabinet was in pieces upon the floor. Nobody had heard a thing of it. The gallery had been full of talk, and the rain was loud on the glass.
He was still in his fez and his good coat. At his collar was fastened the small gold pin set with a single sapphire chip, which he wore always and never in his life took off. He had come to Cairnholm out of India with Xerxes and had lived at Hartfield House ever since as his companion, having no fortune of his own; the pin had not been bought with his own money but given him, and the household had grown so accustomed to the sight of it that it had stopped remarking on it altogether.
Nothing had been taken. The Maharaja's Sapphire remained upon its velvet in the gallery, and the cabinet stood open and entire but for the broken bowl. The second sabre remained in the umbrella-stand in the vestibule, which is the room one must cross in going between the gallery and the breakfast-room, whichever way one is going.
Dr Tobias Quill, who is coroner as well as physician, set the death between half past nine and half past ten. He observed further that the blow had been struck by a person standing square in front of Aziz; that it had been struck once only; and that it had been struck hard.
On the floor, near the overturned table, lay a torn half-sheet of the Colonel's Bombay venture prospectus, with the marriage settlement clause uppermost.
The Bombay venture wanted fresh capital, which the marriage settlement would supply, and Colonel Cecil Cruikshank had pressed Xerxes for a signature three times in a fortnight and been three times put off without a reason given. That afternoon, in the vestibule, Aziz had told the Colonel plainly that Xerxes would not be signing anything, and that the Colonel should stop coming to the house about it. A footman heard the Colonel's voice raised, and a stick struck against the umbrella-stand.
Nobody in Cairnholm had ever heard the Colonel speak of Aziz save as Xerxes's man, his usual complaint being that Aziz had too much of the master's ear. He arrived at eight with the settlement papers in his pocket, meaning to have them signed that night. He is a loud man who breaks things when crossed. He remained in the gallery until about half past nine, when he went off to find Xerxes; found the library door shut with Dr Quill within; and turned back along the passage that runs past the breakfast-room. He returned to the gallery at a quarter past ten, having by then changed his coat, and explained that he had been caught by the rain at the conservatory door. The coat he had worn before half past nine was afterwards found rolled in the conservatory beneath Mabel's water-pan. The rain had not reached the conservatory door, which stands under a glazed porch.
Mabel, Xerxes's cheetah, was chained in the conservatory throughout the evening and was fed there at ten o'clock by Xerxes himself, in the sight of four guests.
The breakfast-room is not used at night. Aziz went there when he wished to be out of company, and everyone in the house knew it. He slept in the little room at the head of the back stair; the room adjoining it, with a connecting door, is Xerxes's, and both keys hang on one ring.
As for the rest of the company, they were where they said they were, and others said so too. Nan Pringle, the poor relation who follows the Colonel about as his unpaid companion, and who knows that the arrangement sheltering her depends upon the marriage going forward — and who had reason enough to think Aziz an obstacle to it — was in the gallery the whole evening, pouring tea at the long table with Lady Lavinia Loveless and three neighbours from nine o'clock until the body was found. Lavinia, who lodges at the house and gives sittings there, had sat at that tea-table from nine in full view of everybody; Xerxes was in the library and afterwards the conservatory the entire evening.
Effie Strange, heir-presumptive to the Colonel and the intended bride of the proposed match — bright, clever, and quietly in debt — spent much of the evening bent over the Maharaja's Sapphire, and was twice told that the cabinet was not to be handled. She was in the gallery until ten and then at cards with Cousin R and two others until the alarm; Cousin R, who spent the evening watching the company rather than the collection, and who collects what people let fall and banks it, notes that she never left the table. He himself had been at the card-table from a quarter to ten.
The Reverend Simeon Gaunt, half-brother to Lavinia and a frequent visitor to her at the house, was in the chapel-room off the upper landing from nine until half past ten, at his devotions, the door open and his light seen by two maids passing on the stair. He served some years since at a mission in Tangier and does not speak of it. Aziz was in Tangier in the same years, and had never once given any sign of knowing him.
Captain Wat Frew, who runs Xerxes's cargoes and takes a small living from what he learns about everybody, and who had lately been asking the servants odd questions about the breakfast-room and who used it, was on the quay until half past ten signing off the Kittiwake's manifest with the harbour clerk, and did not reach Hartfield House until a quarter to eleven. Dr Quill had been in the library with Xerxes from nine until ten, going over the sleeping-draught and its dosage — he had brought a fresh bottle — and then in the gallery until the body was found. Fifi and Zane passed the whole night at Cruikshank Manor, ten miles off, abed and vouched for by the housekeeper and the night groom; neither was at Hartfield House at all.
The gallery emptied slowly, the rain still on the glass. The Maharaja's Sapphire sat untouched on its velvet, and in the small breakfast-room the sapphire chip at Aziz's collar caught what light there was, a much smaller stone, and nobody's business at all.