Hartfield House gave its orchid gala on a Wednesday evening in October, and Xerxes, who sleeps badly and keeps the conservatory at whatever punishing heat the blooms require, had the gas turned low for their sakes. The effect was handsome. The tiers stood in their brief best, each with its little brass plate, lettered by the same brass hand: Atropa belladonna, Nerium oleander, Aconitum napellus, and, a yard to the left of the oleander, Mentha piperita over the peppermint. Beyond the glass it was October, which nobody in that heat could be persuaded to believe.
The Reverend Simeon Gaunt was found at eleven o'clock in the wicker chair at the far end of the conservatory, quite composed, his hands at rest, a drained cup on the tiling beside him. There was no mark on him whatever. He had been poisoned: the cup had held a tisane of green leaves, still sodden in the bottom, and Dr Tobias Quill, who acts as coroner and was at the gala at Xerxes's asking on account of the crowd and the heat, named the leaves oleander within the hour and observed that a strong cup of it would do exactly what it had done. He had brought nothing in his bag but his usual.
The oleander stood on the third tier, stripped of a handful of leaves at shoulder height. Its brass label read Nerium oleander. The peppermint a yard to its left had also been picked, though less.
Gaunt drank nothing at table and took no wine anywhere, at Hartfield House or elsewhere. It was his known practice, whenever he sat up late with his half-sister's house, to gather his own mint in the conservatory and steep it himself at the little spirit-kettle on the potting bench. At the far end, where the wicker chair and the potting bench stand, the low gas gave nothing away, and a man wishing to read a brass label would have had to bring a candle to it. Gaunt's spectacles were in his coat pocket, folded in their case, and not on his face.
Two persons had been heard, earlier that evening, to remark aloud upon the oleander and the peppermint growing a yard apart, and to say that somebody ought to move one of them. They were Gaunt himself, at six, and Nan, at nine, to the footman on the door.
Upon the potting bench, beside the spirit-kettle, lay the gardener's card, kept there for the servants' benefit, the gardener being at the Manor two days in each week. It read: WARNING — the oleander is fatal in all its parts. LEAVES NOT TO BE CUT. It lay face down under a seed-tray, dusted over, and the dust upon it was undisturbed. It was Nan who had been at the potting bench that evening, writing her letters there where the ink was undisturbed by the company.
On Gaunt's knee his pocket-book lay open at a page dated that day. It bore three sets of initials, and against the third, in his own small hand: "To be spoken of Thursday, before the household." The three sets were C.C., L.L., and N.P.
The Reverend Simeon Gaunt held that a sin named aloud before the household was half cured, and that a sin bought quiet was doubled. He had never in his life taken a payment or a favour, and everyone in Cairnholm knew it. He had spent three days at Hartfield House asking small, patient questions of the servants, and twice had been seen writing in his pocket-book directly afterwards. On the Wednesday morning he had asked Nan, in the corridor and quite gently, whether she would care to speak of the Colonel's household books before he did. She said she would think on it. A housemaid heard both halves.
Nan Pringle holds, and has for two years held, the writing of Colonel Cecil Cruikshank's letters and the keeping of his accounts. Twice this year sums have been moved in that keeping and have come right again a month later. Captain Wat Frew has known of the accounts for a year and has said nothing, being paid quarterly out of them, an arrangement Nan describes as tidy. She takes no payment from the Colonel beyond her keep, and has been heard to say that a woman with nothing has nothing to lose, which the household finds affecting. Lady Lavinia Loveless, for her part, had told her brother on the Tuesday that the Colonel's sittings were paid work, and her brother had told her that he would say so aloud on the Thursday, and that she might sit and hear it.
Mabel, Xerxes's cheetah, lay chained at the conservatory door from half past nine until the body was found, and nobody passed her without the footman's lamp and a deal of noise.
Of the company, then.
Nan, the poor relation, travels wherever the Colonel's business travels and carries his notes for him: austere, watchful, useful, keeping the accounts of other people's lapses in her head and never raising her voice. She was in the conservatory from about nine until a quarter past ten, writing letters at the potting-bench end under the low gas, and thereafter in the small drawing-room with the Colonel's papers, where the footman saw her twice. She says she exchanged perhaps a dozen words with Gaunt and no more.
The Colonel — hot, loud, and immovable upon propriety — was up from Cruikshank Manor on venture business. He has lately paid Lady Lavinia Loveless for sittings to reach his late wife, and does not care to hear the word superstition. He sat at the long table with Xerxes over the venture papers from a quarter to nine until the alarm at eleven; Xerxes, Aziz, and the footman all place him there, and his voice was audible through two doors for most of it. Xerxes himself had been about the house since before dinner, it being his house, and Aziz was with them, and a sleeping draught from Dr Quill stood untouched beside Xerxes's bed.
Zane, footman, was sent over from Cruikshank Manor for the gala, the house being short-handed for a party of that size; he is a rule-abider who would sooner be dismissed than be found where he oughtn't. He was on the conservatory door with the lamp from half past nine, at Mabel's chain, admitting and lighting out every person who passed. He can name them all, and they can name him. His sister Fifi, the maid, passed the night at Cruikshank Manor, abed and vouched for by the household there; she did not come over for the gala at all.
Cousin R is a guest nobody can place and nobody asks to leave, who collects what people would rather not have collected and has never yet asked anything for it. He had been watching Gaunt all week with an interest he made no attempt to hide. From ten o'clock he was in the picture gallery with Effie and Dr Quill, arranging camellias in a bowl; the three of them were still at it when the alarm came, and each vouches for the others.
Effie Strange is bright, quick, and hollow at the middle, heir-presumptive to the Colonel and in debt to everyone. She had been very gay all evening and twice sent a servant for tea. She was in the picture gallery from ten o'clock with Cousin R and Dr Quill, and before that in the billiard room with Wat, who is disagreeable but precise about times.
Lady Lavinia Loveless, born Isolde Marsh, medium, resident at Hartfield House, and the dead man's half-sister, sat for the Colonel twice this week and was paid for it. She was giving a sitting in the blue room from half past nine to half past ten, the door locked from within as she requires, with two guests in the circle; afterwards she was at the supper table in company until the alarm.
Captain Wat Frew runs Xerxes's less discussable cargoes and takes a small percentage of everyone's secrets besides; he supplies Effie and is owed by half the house. He was in the billiard room until ten, and then in the servants' passage and the cellar with the butler over the champagne, where the butler kept him in sight throughout.
The gala went on a while yet, the orchids at their brief best in the punishing heat, and at the far end of the conservatory the wicker chair with its drained cup, a yard from the brass plate reading Nerium oleander, and a yard further the peppermint, picked a little, and on the bench a card lying face down under its seed-tray with the dust on it undisturbed.