The winter garden at Hartfield House had been prepared with some ceremony for the fountain's first playing. The pipes, long dry and lately mended, were tested at nine and answered in fits and gouts — a cough of air, a spurt, a shudder along the lead, then another cough — until at last the thing found its temper and rose steady. Chairs had been carried out beyond the reach of the spray; the wind turned; the chairs were carried back. There was no music got up for the occasion, the gramophone being thought vulgar against water, and so the garden had nothing in it but the water, which was a great deal, and which made talk at the far end of the ferns entirely inaudible from the drawing-room doors. A person standing at the rim could not be seen from those doors at all.
Xerxes, who had come home from India rich and had furnished his house accordingly, moved between the drawing room and the garden as a host must, ordering the fountain tried and tried again. Mabel, his cheetah, lay stretched along the warm pipe-run and did not trouble herself about any of it.
The company had drifted gardenwards by degrees. At some point after that drift there was a report — one report, muffled by the water's noise, which every member of the household afterwards agreed upon. No one could say they had counted a second. Mabel did not stir, being long accustomed to the guns of the house.
Effie Strange was found among the ferns at the fountain's edge, seated as though she had simply stopped in the middle of some small errand. She had been shot once through the breast. There was a single ball, and no sign whatever of a struggle, which was thought, on the whole, considerate of everyone concerned.
Her right glove lay on the fountain's rim, the fingers turned inside out, as though it had been dragged off in a hurry by someone with no patience for gloves. Her reticule was open beside her. Nothing of hers was missing from it.
What was near her hand did not belong to her. It was an empty velvet slip-case, of the narrow sort made to house one set stone and nothing else. Aziz had worn a jewel at dinner. After the fountain he did not.
That jewel is a single great set stone brought from India, given to Aziz under this roof, worth rather more than anything he might have bought himself; he wears it always, and has never been known to sell it or to lend it. Aziz had withdrawn before the playing to freshen and to change, and was alone in his rooms on the far side of the house when the report came, though a valet carried up his water and speaks for the hour.
There hangs in the winter-garden vestibule a pair of duelling pistols, a fixture of the house these several years. One of them was found lately fired and put back in its case. The gun room besides stands unlocked, as it always has, and its contents are known to everyone who dines here.
Effie herself had been a bright creature, deep in debt, and dependent upon her laudanum; she had of late fallen into the habit of pricing whatever small valuables passed within her reach. Her laudanum came from Captain Wat Frew, who runs cargoes for Xerxes and is therefore frequently about the place, and for which she owed him money. Wat was at the water-stair from ten until past the report, receiving a late boat, with two boatmen who say so.
In the library sat Colonel Cecil Cruikshank, come to Hartfield on business, with the estate papers spread before him and his man of business at his elbow. The Colonel is charmed by Effie and speaks warmly of her; she stood heir-presumptive to his fortune. His will, however, was not settled. The papers on his desk that night still weighed Effie against Nan and carried the signature of neither. The clerk sat with the Colonel through the report and says so; and in the anteroom adjoining, Nan Pringle was copying letters to the Colonel's dictation, which the same clerk and the same Colonel will confirm. Nan had come with Cecil, as Nan generally does, and stood as rival claimant to whatever Effie did not take.
Across the hall, Lady Lavinia Loveless was laying out the sitting-room for a small séance to follow the fountain, assisted by two maids setting the table, both of whom speak for her. Effie had lately been rude about Lavinia's spirits.
Of the wider circle, none were at Hartfield at all. The twins, Fifi and Zane, were abed at Cruikshank Manor and vouched for by that household; the Reverend Simeon Gaunt kept his vigil in the town chapel with his verger; Dr Tobias Quill was at a lying-in across the city until dawn; and Cousin R was away at the coast.
The water, tried and true at last, rose steady and silver over the ferns; Mabel dozed along the warm pipe; and Effie sat unmoving at the rim, one glove drawn off, the empty velvet slip-case bright beside her hand.