The Moonstone
had remained under examination for any length of time, were my lady’s
own maid and the first housemaid, those two being also the women who
had taken the lead in persecuting their unfortunate fellow-servant from
the first. Reaching these conclusions, I looked in on them, casually as
it might be, in the servants’ hall, and, finding tea going forward,
instantly invited myself to that meal. (For, _nota bene_, a drop of tea
is to a woman’s tongue what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp.)
My reliance on the tea-pot, as an ally, did not go unrewarded. In less
than half an hour I knew as much as the Sergeant himself.
My lady’s maid and the housemaid, had, it appeared, neither of them
believed in Rosanna’s illness of the previous day. These two devils—I
ask your pardon; but how else _can_ you describe a couple of spiteful
women?—had stolen upstairs, at intervals during the Thursday afternoon;
had tried Rosanna’s door, and found it locked; had knocked, and not
been answered; had listened, and not heard a sound inside. When the
girl had come down to tea, and had been sent up, still out of sorts, to
bed again, the two devils aforesaid had tried her door once more, and
found it locked; had looked at the keyhole, and found it stopped up;
had seen a light under the door at midnight, and had heard the
crackling of a fire (a fire in a servant’s bedroom in the month of
June!) at four in the morning. All this they had told Sergeant Cuff,
who, in return for their anxiety to enlighten him, had eyed them with
sour and suspicious looks, and had shown them plainly that he didn’t
believe either one or the other. Hence, the unfavourable reports of him
which these two women had brought out with them from the examination.
Hence, also (without reckoning the influence of the tea-pot), their
readiness to let their tongues run to any length on the subject of the
Sergeant’s ungracious behaviour to them.
Having had some experience of the great Cuff’s roundabout ways, and
having last seen him evidently bent on following Rosanna privately when
she went out for her walk, it seemed clear to me that he had thought it
unadvisable to let the lady’s maid and the housemaid know how
materially they had helped him. They were just the sort of women, if he
had treated their evidence as trustworthy, to have been puffed up by
it, and to have said or done something which would have put Rosanna
Spearman on her guard.
I walked out in the fine summer afternoon, very sorry for the poor
girl, and very uneasy in my mind at the turn things had taken. Drifting
towards the shrubbery, some time later, there I met Mr. Franklin. After
returning from seeing his cousin off at the station, he had been with
my lady, holding a long conversation with her. She had told him of Miss
Rachel’s unaccountable refusal to let her wardrobe be examined; and had
put him in such low spirits about my young lady that he seemed to
shrink from speaking on the subject. The family temper appeared in his
face that evening, for the first time in my experience of him.
“Well, Betteredge,” he said, “how does the atmosphere of mystery and
suspicion in which we are all living now, agree with you? Do you
remember that morning when I first came here with the Moonstone? I wish
to God we had thrown it into the quicksand!”
After breaking out in that way, he abstained from speaking again until
he had composed himself. We walked silently, side by side, for a minute
or two, and then he asked me what had become of Sergeant Cuff. It was
impossible to put Mr. Franklin off with the excuse of the Sergeant
being in my room, composing his mind. I told him exactly what had
happened, mentioning particularly what my lady’s maid and the
house-maid had said about Rosanna Spearman.
Mr. Franklin’s clear head saw the turn the Sergeant’s suspicions had
taken, in the twinkling of an eye.
“Didn’t you tell me this morning,” he said, “that one of the
tradespeople declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to
Frizinghall, when we supposed her to be ill in her room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If my aunt’s maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may
depend upon it the tradesman _did_ meet her. The girl’s attack of
illness was a blind to deceive us. She had some guilty reason for going
to the town secretly. The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and
the fire heard crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire
lit to destroy it. Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond. I’ll go in
directly, and tell my aunt the turn things have taken.”
“Not just yet, if you please, sir,” said a melancholy voice behind us.
We both turned about, and found ourselves face to face with Sergeant
Cuff.
“Why not just yet?” asked Mr. Franklin.
“Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell Miss
Verinder.”
“Suppose she does. What then?” Mr. Franklin said those words with a
sudden heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended
him.
“Do you think it’s wise, sir,” said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, “to put
such a question as that to me—at such a time as this?”
There was a moment’s silence between them: Mr. Franklin walked close up
to the Sergeant. The two looked each other straight in the face. Mr.
Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had raised
it.
“I suppose you know, Mr. Cuff,” he said, “that you are treading on
delicate ground?”
“It isn’t the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I find myself
treading on delicate ground,” answered the other, as immovable as ever.
“I am to understand that you forbid me to tell my aunt what has
happened?”
“You are to understand, if you please, sir, that I throw up the case,
if you tell Lady Verinder, or tell anybody, what has happened, until I
give you leave.”
That settled it. Mr. Franklin had no choice but to submit. He turned
away in anger—and left us.
I had stood there listening to them, all in a tremble; not knowing whom
to suspect, or what to think next. In the midst of my confusion, two
things, however, were plain to me. First, that my young lady was, in
some unaccountable manner, at the bottom of the sharp speeches that had
passed between them. Second, that they thoroughly understood each
other, without having previously exchanged a word of explanation on
either side.
“Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, “you have done a very foolish
thing in my absence. You have done a little detective business on your
own account. For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do
your detective business along with me.”
He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by
which he had come. I dare say I had deserved his reproof—but I was not
going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman, for all that.
Thief or no thief, legal or not legal, I don’t care—I pitied her.
“What do you want of me?” I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.
“Only a little information about the country round here,” said the
Sergeant.
I couldn’t well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.
“Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from
this house?” asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke, to the
fir-plantation which led to the Shivering Sand.
“Yes,” I said, “there is a path.”
“Show it to me.”
Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and I
set forth for the Shivering Sand.
CHAPTER XV
The Sergeant remained silent, thinking his own thoughts, till we
entered the plantation of firs which led to the quicksand. There he
roused himself, like a man whose mind was made up, and spoke to me
again.
“Mr. Betteredge,” he said, “as you have honoured me by taking an oar in
my boat, and as you may, I think, be of some assistance to me before
the evening is out, I see no use in our mystifying one another any
longer, and I propose to set you an example of plain speaking on my
side. You are determined to give me no information to the prejudice of
Rosanna Spearman, because she has been a good girl to _you_, and
because you pity her heartily. Those humane considerations do you a
world of credit, but they happen in this instance to be humane
considerations clean thrown away. Rosanna Spearman is not in the
slightest danger of getting into trouble—no, not if I fix her with
being concerned in the disappearance of the Diamond, on evidence which
is as plain as the nose on your face!”
“Do you mean that my lady won’t prosecute?” I asked.
“I mean that your lady _can’t_ prosecute,” said the Sergeant. “Rosanna
Spearman is simply an instrument in the hands of another person, and
Rosanna Spearman will be held harmless for that other person’s sake.”
He spoke like a man in earnest—there was no denying that. Still, I felt
something stirring uneasily against him in my mind. “Can’t you give
that other person a name?” I said.
“Can’t _you_, Mr. Betteredge?”
“No.”
Sergeant Cuff stood stock-still, and surveyed me with a look of
melancholy interest.
“It’s always a pleasure to me to be tender towards human infirmity,” he
said. “I feel particularly tender at the present moment, Mr.
Betteredge, towards you. And you, with the same excellent motive, feel
particularly tender towards Rosanna Spearman, don’t you? Do you happen
to know whether she has had a new outfit of linen lately?”
What he meant by slipping in this extraordinary question unawares, I
was at a total loss to imagine. Seeing no possible injury to Rosanna if
I owned the truth, I answered that the girl had come to us rather
sparely provided with linen, and that my lady, in recompense for her
good conduct (I laid a stress on her good conduct), had given her a new
outfit not a fortnight since.
“This is a miserable world,” says the Sergeant. “Human life, Mr.
Betteredge, is a sort of target—misfortune is always firing at it, and
always hitting the mark. But for that outfit, we should have discovered
a new nightgown or petticoat among Rosanna’s things, and have nailed
her in that way. You’re not at a loss to follow me, are you? You have
examined the servants yourself, and you know what discoveries two of
them made outside Rosanna’s door. Surely you know what the girl was
about yesterday, after she was taken ill? You can’t guess? Oh dear me,
it’s as plain as that strip of light there, at the end of the trees. At
eleven, on Thursday morning, Superintendent Seegrave (who is a mass of
human infirmity) points out to all the women servants the smear on the
door. Rosanna has her own reasons for suspecting her own things; she
takes the first opportunity of getting to her room, finds the
paint-stain on her night-gown, or petticoat, or what not, shams ill and
slips away to the town, gets the materials for making a new petticoat
or nightgown, makes it alone in her room on the Thursday night, lights
a fire (not to destroy it; two of her fellow-servants are prying
outside her door, and she knows better than to make a smell of burning,
and to have a lot of tinder to get rid of)—lights a fire, I say, to dry
and iron the substitute dress after wringing it out, keeps the stained
dress hidden (probably _on_ her), and is at this moment occupied in
making away with it, in some convenient place, on that lonely bit of
beach ahead of us. I have traced her this evening to your fishing
village, and to one particular cottage, which we may possibly have to
visit, before we go back. She stopped in the cottage for some time, and
she came out with (as I believe) something hidden under her cloak. A
cloak (on a woman’s back) is an emblem of charity—it covers a multitude
of sins. I saw her set off northwards along the coast, after leaving
the cottage. Is your sea-shore here considered a fine specimen of
marine landscape, Mr. Betteredge?”
I answered, “Yes,” as shortly as might be.