The Body in the Library

Questioning Conway Jefferson’s butler, Sir Henry promises discretion and asks him, for his employer’s sake, to be candid in his assessment of Ruby, Mark, and Adelaide. Edwards the butler tells him that his master hated “deceit” more than anything, but was uncharacteristically naïve when it came to Ruby, whom Edwards disparages in classist and misogynistic terms, arguing that she cared only for Conway’s money. Conway, he thinks, is very fond of his daughter-in-law Adelaide, and accordingly took it “badly” when she began to expand her social life and transfer her attention to others. Conway never liked Mark Gaskell but continued to support him out of love for his late daughter. If either of his in-laws remarried, Edwards says, Conway would feel a little betrayed. Though Edwards denies that Conway was jealous in the usual sense, he describes a recent incident that gave him pause, when a snapshot of a young man with dark, “untidy” hair fell out of Ruby’s purse. Ruby denied knowing who the man was or how the photograph got into her purse, but Conway didn’t believe her and looked furious. Finally, Ruby “changed tactics,” confessing that she’d danced with the man a few times and claiming that he must have slipped the photo into her purse without her knowledge.