The Moonstone
unravelling a mystery, there isn’t the equal in England of Sergeant
Cuff!”
We all got excited and impatient as the time drew near for the
appearance of this renowned and capable character. Superintendent
Seegrave, returning to us at his appointed time, and hearing that the
Sergeant was expected, instantly shut himself up in a room, with pen,
ink, and paper, to make notes of the Report which would be certainly
expected from him. I should have liked to have gone to the station
myself, to fetch the Sergeant. But my lady’s carriage and horses were
not to be thought of, even for the celebrated Cuff; and the pony-chaise
was required later for Mr. Godfrey. He deeply regretted being obliged
to leave his aunt at such an anxious time; and he kindly put off the
hour of his departure till as late as the last train, for the purpose
of hearing what the clever London police-officer thought of the case.
But on Friday night he must be in town, having a Ladies’ Charity, in
difficulties, waiting to consult him on Saturday morning.
When the time came for the Sergeant’s arrival, I went down to the gate
to look out for him.
A fly from the railway drove up as I reached the lodge; and out got a
grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if he had
not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was
dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His
face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and
dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey,
had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of
looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware
of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice was melancholy; his long
lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or
an undertaker—or anything else you like, except what he really was. A
more complete opposite to Superintendent Seegrave than Sergeant Cuff,
and a less comforting officer to look at, for a family in distress, I
defy you to discover, search where you may.
“Is this Lady Verinder’s?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I am Sergeant Cuff.”
“This way, sir, if you please.”
On our road to the house, I mentioned my name and position in the
family, to satisfy him that he might speak to me about the business on
which my lady was to employ him. Not a word did he say about the
business, however, for all that. He admired the grounds, and remarked
that he felt the sea air very brisk and refreshing. I privately
wondered, on my side, how the celebrated Cuff had got his reputation.
We reached the house, in the temper of two strange dogs, coupled up
together for the first time in their lives by the same chain.
Asking for my lady, and hearing that she was in one of the
conservatories, we went round to the gardens at the back, and sent a
servant to seek her. While we were waiting, Sergeant Cuff looked
through the evergreen arch on our left, spied out our rosery, and
walked straight in, with the first appearance of anything like interest
that he had shown yet. To the gardener’s astonishment, and to my
disgust, this celebrated policeman proved to be quite a mine of
learning on the trumpery subject of rose-gardens.
“Ah, you’ve got the right exposure here to the south and sou’-west,”
says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of
pleasure in his melancholy voice. “This is the shape for a
rosery—nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks
between all the beds. But they oughtn’t to be gravel walks like these.
Grass, Mr. Gardener—grass walks between your roses; gravel’s too hard
for them. That’s a sweet pretty bed of white roses and blush roses.
They always mix well together, don’t they? Here’s the white musk rose,
Mr. Betteredge—our old English rose holding up its head along with the
best and the newest of them. Pretty dear!” says the Sergeant, fondling
the Musk Rose with his lanky fingers, and speaking to it as if he was
speaking to a child.
This was a nice sort of man to recover Miss Rachel’s Diamond, and to
find out the thief who stole it!
“You seem to be fond of roses, Sergeant?” I remarked.
“I haven’t much time to be fond of anything,” says Sergeant Cuff. “But
when I _have_ a moment’s fondness to bestow, most times, Mr.
Betteredge, the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father’s
nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One
of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and
try my hand at growing roses. There will be grass walks, Mr. Gardener,
between my beds,” says the Sergeant, on whose mind the gravel paths of
our rosery seemed to dwell unpleasantly.
“It seems an odd taste, sir,” I ventured to say, “for a man in your
line of life.”
“If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),” says
Sergeant Cuff, “you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most
times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business. Show
me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a
thief; and I’ll correct my tastes accordingly—if it isn’t too late at
my time of life. You find the damask rose a goodish stock for most of
the tender sorts, don’t you, Mr. Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here’s a
lady coming. Is it Lady Verinder?”
He had seen her before either I or the gardener had seen her, though we
knew which way to look, and he didn’t. I began to think him rather a
quicker man than he appeared to be at first sight.
The Sergeant’s appearance, or the Sergeant’s errand—one or both—seemed
to cause my lady some little embarrassment. She was, for the first time
in all my experience of her, at a loss what to say at an interview with
a stranger. Sergeant Cuff put her at her ease directly. He asked if any
other person had been employed about the robbery before we sent for
him; and hearing that another person had been called in, and was now in
the house, begged leave to speak to him before anything else was done.
My lady led the way back. Before he followed her, the Sergeant relieved
his mind on the subject of the gravel walks by a parting word to the
gardener. “Get her ladyship to try grass,” he said, with a sour look at
the paths. “No gravel! no gravel!”
Why Superintendent Seegrave should have appeared to be several sizes
smaller than life, on being presented to Sergeant Cuff, I can’t
undertake to explain. I can only state the fact. They retired together;
and remained a weary long time shut up from all mortal intrusion. When
they came out, Mr. Superintendent was excited, and Mr. Sergeant was
yawning.
“The Sergeant wishes to see Miss Verinder’s sitting-room,” says Mr.
Seegrave, addressing me with great pomp and eagerness. “The Sergeant
may have some questions to ask. Attend the Sergeant, if you please!”
While I was being ordered about in this way, I looked at the great
Cuff. The great Cuff, on his side, looked at Superintendent Seegrave in
that quietly expecting way which I have already noticed. I can’t affirm
that he was on the watch for his brother officer’s speedy appearance in
the character of an Ass—I can only say that I strongly suspected it.
I led the way upstairs. The Sergeant went softly all over the Indian
cabinet and all round the “boudoir;” asking questions (occasionally
only of Mr. Superintendent, and continually of me), the drift of which
I believe to have been equally unintelligible to both of us. In due
time, his course brought him to the door, and put him face to face with
the decorative painting that you know of. He laid one lean inquiring
finger on the small smear, just under the lock, which Superintendent
Seegrave had already noticed, when he reproved the women-servants for
all crowding together into the room.
“That’s a pity,” says Sergeant Cuff. “How did it happen?”
He put the question to me. I answered that the women-servants had
crowded into the room on the previous morning, and that some of their
petticoats had done the mischief, “Superintendent Seegrave ordered them
out, sir,” I added, “before they did any more harm.”
“Right!” says Mr. Superintendent in his military way. “I ordered them
out. The petticoats did it, Sergeant—the petticoats did it.”
“Did you notice which petticoat did it?” asked Sergeant Cuff, still
addressing himself, not to his brother-officer, but to me.
“No, sir.”
He turned to Superintendent Seegrave upon that, and said, “_You_
noticed, I suppose?”
Mr. Superintendent looked a little taken aback; but he made the best of
it. “I can’t charge my memory, Sergeant,” he said, “a mere trifle—a
mere trifle.”
Sergeant Cuff looked at Mr. Seegrave, as he had looked at the gravel
walks in the rosery, and gave us, in his melancholy way, the first
taste of his quality which we had had yet.
“I made a private inquiry last week, Mr. Superintendent,” he said. “At
one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there
was a spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for. In
all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I
have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet. Before we go a step
further in this business we must see the petticoat that made the smear,
and we must know for certain when that paint was wet.”
Mr. Superintendent—taking his set-down rather sulkily—asked if he
should summon the women. Sergeant Cuff, after considering a minute,
sighed, and shook his head.
“No,” he said, “we’ll take the matter of the paint first. It’s a
question of Yes or No with the paint—which is short. It’s a question of
petticoats with the women—which is long. What o’clock was it when the
servants were in this room yesterday morning? Eleven o’clock—eh? Is
there anybody in the house who knows whether that paint was wet or dry,
at eleven yesterday morning?”
“Her ladyship’s nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, knows,” I said.
“Is the gentleman in the house?”
Mr. Franklin was as close at hand as could be—waiting for his first
chance of being introduced to the great Cuff. In half a minute he was
in the room, and was giving his evidence as follows:
“That door, Sergeant,” he said, “has been painted by Miss Verinder,
under my inspection, with my help, and in a vehicle of my own
composition. The vehicle dries whatever colours may be used with it, in
twelve hours.”
“Do you remember when the smeared bit was done, sir?” asked the
Sergeant.
“Perfectly,” answered Mr. Franklin. “That was the last morsel of the
door to be finished. We wanted to get it done, on Wednesday last—and I
myself completed it by three in the afternoon, or soon after.”
“Today is Friday,” said Sergeant Cuff, addressing himself to
Superintendent Seegrave. “Let us reckon back, sir. At three on the
Wednesday afternoon, that bit of the painting was completed. The
vehicle dried it in twelve hours—that is to say, dried it by three
o’clock on Thursday morning. At eleven on Thursday morning you held
your inquiry here. Take three from eleven, and eight remains. That
paint had been _eight hours dry_, Mr. Superintendent, when you supposed
that the women-servants’ petticoats smeared it.”
First knock-down blow for Mr. Seegrave! If he had not suspected poor
Penelope, I should have pitied him.
Having settled the question of the paint, Sergeant Cuff, from that
moment, gave his brother-officer up as a bad job—and addressed himself
to Mr. Franklin, as the more promising assistant of the two.
“It’s quite on the cards, sir,” he said, “that you have put the clue
into our hands.”
As the words passed his lips, the bedroom door opened, and Miss Rachel
came out among us suddenly.
She addressed herself to the Sergeant, without appearing to notice (or
to heed) that he was a perfect stranger to her.
“Did you say,” she asked, pointing to Mr. Franklin, “that _he_ had put