Xerxes Hartfield had been a fortnight away on business in the east, and returned on a wet October evening to find his house subtly altered in his favour. The hall lamps stood in new positions; the Bokhara runner had been turned; the great stair wore a carpet it had not worn when he left. He pronounced himself pleased, ordered a homecoming dinner, and the usual company assembled.
Aziz, who orders the household at Hartfield House, had spent the fortnight arranging all this against his master's return, and moved between kitchen and dining-room until half past ten with the composure of a man whose preparations have gone off. The stair had been re-carpeted by tradesmen who left on the Friday. Their foreman's docket lay still upon the hall table, and recorded, in the patient hand of a man paid by the hour, every rod set and tested on the Friday afternoon.
Dinner was agreeable. Colonel Cecil Cruikshank announced over the fish, with some feeling, that he had that afternoon signed a new will at his solicitors' in Charlotte Street, and that Effie was named in it in the place of his niece, Nan Pringle. Nan poured the wine and said that the change was only right. It should be said that the Colonel has altered his will four times in six years, twice towards Nan and twice towards Effie, according to which of them last pleased or displeased him; the company received the announcement much as one receives a change in the weather.
Effie herself spoke cheerfully of what she would do with the Colonel's money — a season in Nice, a mare, and a subscription to a spirit-cabinet — this being a programme somewhat in excess of the sixty pounds she owed about the town. Of that sum eleven pounds stood to Captain Wat Frew, who had sold her her laudanum and her stronger comforts these two years, and who had told her at the door, quite civilly, that she might have credit until the quarter-day and no further.
The rest of the party disposed itself as the rest of parties do. Xerxes had come home at six, dined at eight, and was in the gun-room from half past nine with Wat, going over lading bills, which are dated and initialled and dull. Lady Lavinia Loveless sat at cards in the drawing-room from ten, with her half-brother the Reverend Simeon Gaunt and with Cousin R. Gaunt had that week preached upon the moth and the flame and had named no names; he had refused Effie the sacrament in the spring, and had a month since petitioned Xerxes to be given the ordering of her penance, and Xerxes had refused him, and Gaunt had accepted the refusal and said no more of it. Cousin R, who collects other people's secrets and spends none of them, had lately taken an interest in the Colonel's testamentary arrangements, and in Nan's eleven unpaid years. Mabel, Xerxes's cheetah, lay across the drawing-room threshold and would let no one past without a fuss. Fifi and Zane were not there at all, having passed the whole evening at Cruikshank Manor airing the rooms against the Colonel's return, and being vouched for by the household there.
At about half past nine Nan went up to fetch the Colonel's drops from his coat in the north bedroom, and was gone some little while. She came down by the back stair, as she always does, and remarked that the servants' passage wanted a lamp. The back stair at Hartfield House gives on the servants' passage and on the housemaid's cupboard at the head of the main stair, so that anyone going up by the front may come down by the back without crossing the hall. From about ten o'clock she was at the card table.
Nan Pringle has kept Cruikshank Manor for eleven years on an allowance of thirty pounds a year and the expectation of the Colonel's estate. She mends the sashes herself, and sets the clocks, and last spring re-hung a door that had dropped; the Colonel is fond of saying she is handier than his man. She is quiet, useful, and is known for never asking for anything.
At about ten minutes to eleven Effie went up alone, saying that she wanted her shawl from the blue bedroom. The company were at cards and coffee below. The landing lamp had been carried away to the morning-room for the evening, so that the top of the stair was dark; Aziz, who orders the lamps, says he did not move it and could not say who did.
A little after eleven o'clock Effie Strange was found at the foot of the main staircase, lying tidily upon the marble, her neck broken by the fall. There was no blood, and no disorder to her dress beyond one slipper left three steps up. Dr Tobias Quill, who came only on being sent for after the outcry, examined her at the household's request and gave the death as instantaneous, and the fall as unassisted from above — no hand upon her, and no mark of a struggle.
The stair, examined afterwards by lamplight, proved to have been improved once more. The seventh rod from the top was out of its brackets and lay across the tread beneath the loosened carpet. The brass was unmarked. The screws had not been wrenched but backed out cleanly, as with a fitted driver.
A japanned tool-roll belonging to the carpet tradesmen had been left behind in the housemaid's cupboard at the head of the stair. It was found in its place, tied as tradesmen tie such things. The driver in it was clean, while the rest of the tools carried a fortnight's dust.
The company stood about the foot of the stair with the coffee going cold, and Nan Pringle, who is always useful, fetched a sheet from the linen-press and laid it over Effie with great neatness, and then went up and put the landing lamp back where it belonged.