The household at Hartfield House came back from evening service at St Bride's in a wet and companionable temper, shook out its umbrellas, and sat down eighteen at table with the long windows shuttered against the rain. Mabel, Xerxes's tame cheetah, took her usual station under the sideboard and drowsed there through the soup, being a creature of settled habit and no interest whatever in the fish.
Aziz sat where he always sat. He had come to Cairnholm with Xerxes and had lived at Hartfield House ever since, and about his neck, on a plain chain, he wore a Moroccan ring set with a single large blue stone. It had been given him by Xerxes at Bombay. Aziz had no means of his own and could not have bought such a thing in ten lifetimes, and he had never been seen without it. Twice he had been offered money for it — once by a Glasgow dealer, who went away instructed; and once in April, at Cruikshank Manor, by Effie, who asked him prettily what he would take for it and was told nothing at all.
Effie had arrived that afternoon by train with two trunks and no maid, and was very gay at dinner. Her debts in Cairnholm stood at four hundred pounds, and her druggist had declined her further credit since Lady Day. On Saturday the Colonel had signed a codicil tying her portion up until she should be thirty, and he announced this at table on Sunday with considerable satisfaction, as a man announces a well-made investment. Effie laughed at it as readily as anyone.
There had been, before dinner, a short exchange in the hall. A housemaid heard only its end: Aziz saying he would tell Xerxes what he had seen her do upstairs, and Effie laughing at that too.
The rest of the table went on as tables do. Captain Wat Frew, who works the Hartfield cargoes and dines at the house when a ship is in, spent the whole of the fish course pressing Xerxes about a bill; he had also, earlier that week, offered Aziz twenty pounds for a private word about the household, and been refused. The Reverend Simeon Gaunt, who had preached that evening and come on to dine with his half-sister Lavinia, was silent and would not take the champagne; he had served at a mission at Tangier before he came to Cairnholm, and Aziz had never, in Cairnholm, spoken the word Tangier in his hearing. Dr Tobias Quill complained that his case must sit in the hall cupboard while he dined, and that the cupboard was not locked; three of the party agreed with him that it was not. Cousin R spoke twice, both times about the weather. Nan kept her own counsel and, presumably, the Colonel's figures. Fifi and Zane were not there at all, being forty miles off at Cruikshank Manor laying up the plate against the Colonel's return, and both abed by ten, and vouched for by that household entire.
The Sunday sweets came up after the fish, glazed violet creams, in three saucers. Aziz was served from the saucer nearest the foot of the table. Effie ate none of them.
At 9:15 Aziz rose, said he was uncommonly heavy in the head, and went up. Lavinia observed afterwards that he had taken nothing but the champagne and two of the sweets.
The party removed to the drawing-room for a seance which Lavinia had promised since Friday. The lamps were turned down, hands were joined, and the circle sat from 9:45 until 11:10. Lavinia's rule is absolute: a broken circle must be begun again. It was not begun again. Gaunt sat between Lavinia and the Colonel; the Colonel between Gaunt and Nan; Nan between the Colonel and Dr Quill; Quill between Nan and the empty chair that should have been Effie's; Cousin R opposite Lavinia. Captain Frew was sent by Xerxes at 10:20 to take a telegram from the boy in the hall, and returned at 10:30. Xerxes stepped to the stair-foot at about a quarter past ten to quiet Mabel, and was in sight of the circle throughout.
Effie had said at table that she disliked the dark and would rather have the fire and a novel. A housemaid carrying coals saw her in the library at 9:40. She was seen again in the drawing-room doorway at 11:10, when the lamps came up.
Mabel, who will not settle near strangers, lay all evening at the foot of the drawing-room stairs. She rose once, at about a quarter past ten, and then lay down again.
A housemaid clearing the upper landing at ten o'clock reported the door of the blue writing-room shut, a light beneath it, and someone within humming.
At 11:30 Aziz was found in the small blue writing-room off the upper landing, laid back in the armchair, quite composed, with a velvet cushion on the floor at his feet. His fez had been set neatly on the side table. Dr Quill was called up from the drawing-room and had not yet touched his sherry; he came, looked, and declared him dead, and named the manner before he went back for it. Aziz had been smothered with the cushion while insensible from a heavy dose of laudanum taken by mouth. There was no mark upon him but a little pressure about the mouth.
At his elbow stood a half-drunk glass of champagne and a saucer of the Sunday sweets. The dregs in the glass smelt faintly of the chemist's shop.
The chain was still about his neck. The ring was gone from it. The clasp was not broken; it had been unhooked, and hooked again.
The saucer that had stood nearest the foot of the table was afterwards found emptied and wiped. The other two stood half full in the pantry. The laudanum bottle was found in Dr Quill's case, in the hall cupboard, where it belonged, with its level down by half. And on the library hearth, among burnt paper, there lay a small square of black velvet, scorched at one corner — the lining of a jeweller's slip-case. No slip-case was found in the house. A jeweller in the Candleriggs opens at eight on Monday mornings, and asks no provenance for a loose stone.
The rain went on at the shutters. The lamps were up again in the drawing-room, and the circle, having been unbroken, dispersed. On the upper landing a fez sat very neatly on a side table, beside a chain with nothing on it.