It had rained all that Tuesday, and the drawing-room at Cruikshank Manor had been given over to music since noon. The long room was cleared, the chairs set in rows facing the piano, the lamps turned down to a civil glimmer; and the company, having agreed to be charmed, sat still in the dark and faced one direction, which is what a musical evening chiefly consists of.
At 11:00 the lamps were raised, and Colonel Cecil Cruikshank was found in his wing-chair at the front of the rows, his head back and a sofa-cushion lying across his knees. Dr Tobias Quill, who examined him where he sat, declined to be mysterious about it: the Colonel had been smothered with that cushion, and had been insensible from laudanum before ever it touched him. The company received this with the mild attentiveness of persons who have been obliged to sit upright for eighty minutes and are glad of a change of subject.
On the little table at the Colonel's elbow stood his glass of champagne, half-drunk. Quill tasted the dregs, made the face of a man confirming a suspicion he had hoped to be spared, and said there was laudanum in them — in a quantity he described as enough to put a large man into a stupor within a quarter of an hour.
Five glasses had been poured out in the hall at 9:30 and carried in on a tray by Zane, the footman. The Colonel's was the last glass off the tray, and Effie took it from Zane at the door and set it at her uncle's elbow herself before going to the piano.
The music began at 9:40 and ran to 11:00 without an interval. Effie played the whole programme from memory; Nan stood at her shoulder to turn the pages. The lamps stayed down throughout, the company seated in the dark and facing the instrument, and the Colonel's wing-chair set apart at the front, nearest the piano and out of the rows altogether, as befits a man who has paid for the evening.
At 10:20, between pieces, Effie rose from the stool, crossed to the Colonel's chair, bent over him for the space of perhaps two minutes, and returned. Nan, Lavinia and Cousin R each mention it, and all three took it for the girl settling a cushion behind her uncle's head, since he had lately begun to breathe heavily and was thought to be dozing. A dozing host is not a thing one remarks upon aloud.
Nobody else left a chair between 9:40 and 11:00. Cousin R, who dislikes music and had accordingly taken the back row by the door with his eyes open, is positive upon the point; the drawing-room door was within a yard of him the whole while. Beside him in the second row from the back sat Wat and Quill, who vouch for one another, and whom Cousin R vouches for in turn. Lavinia sat in the front row, two chairs from the Colonel's.
A small apothecary's phial, empty and unlabelled, was found afterwards in the fire-irons basket beside the hearth. Quill observed that such phials are sold in every chemist's in Cairnholm, and that four people in the house kept laudanum openly. His own, in his bag, had been in the hall cupboard with his coat and hat from 9:00 until the lamps went up; Mrs Sib Gow had the hall, and says nobody went near the cupboard. The Colonel's own bottle, in the library press, was found untouched and full.
The Colonel's chair faced away from the rows. Lavinia observed afterwards — she has a medium's eye for who is looking at whom — that of the whole company, only Effie, at the stool, had sat the evening looking at the Colonel's face.
No weapon was brought into the room; nothing was arranged or posed; the cushion was one of the chair's own. Quill, as coroner, remarked that nothing in the manner of it pointed at anybody in particular.
As to the day that had led up to it. The Colonel's new will was signed and witnessed in the library at 4:00 that same afternoon, Mrs Sib Gow and Zane standing witness to the signature. Neither witness was told a word of its contents, and the Colonel told the company at dinner only that the matter was "settled, and settled for good." He had twice in the past year altered his will in Nan's favour and twice altered it back; and at luncheon he had said that Effie had cost him more than the Lucknow business, and that he had made up his mind at last.
Effie, for her part, owes one hundred and eighty pounds about Cairnholm, chiefly to a chemist in Candle Street and to Captain Wat Frew, who supplies her laudanum, and who had told her at the start of the month that there would be no more on credit. Wat's own quarterly sum from the Colonel — drawn these two years on account of a matter in Lucknow — had been paid as usual on the first of the month, and the Colonel had made no move against him; Wat was heard to remark in the hall, within Mrs Gow's hearing, that the old man was good for another ten years of it.
Mrs Gow had seen Effie come up from the hall at 9:25, before the glasses were poured, and go down the passage towards the service stair, and back. Effie had carried a reticule into the drawing-room and left it on the piano. Zane, having set down the tray at 9:30, went below at once, and Mrs Gow had him in the kitchen passage from 9:32 until the alarm, and says he did not come up.
Cousin R had asked the Colonel that week to sit for a photographic portrait and been refused. He told Lavinia afterwards that he would ask again in the spring, and that he was in no hurry.
Of the wider circle, four were elsewhere and may be left there. Xerxes and Aziz passed the whole evening at Hartfield House with their own party; Fifi had the night out and was with her people in the Gorbals Row, vouched for by that household; and Gaunt was at his vigil in St Mungo's chapel until dawn, with two parishioners attending him.
So the lamps burned up on a tidy room: the chairs still in their rows facing the piano, the music-stand holding a page nobody turned, and the Colonel in his wing-chair at the front with his own cushion across his knees.