The Moonstone
conducting my inquiry. Second, as to whether Miss Verinder had an
accomplice among the female servants in the house. After carefully
thinking it over, I determined to conduct the inquiry in, what we
should call at our office, a highly irregular manner. For this reason:
I had a family scandal to deal with, which it was my business to keep
within the family limits. The less noise made, and the fewer strangers
employed to help me, the better. As to the usual course of taking
people in custody on suspicion, going before the magistrate, and all
the rest of it—nothing of the sort was to be thought of, when your
ladyship’s daughter was (as I believed) at the bottom of the whole
business. In this case, I felt that a person of Mr. Betteredge’s
character and position in the house—knowing the servants as he did, and
having the honour of the family at heart—would be safer to take as an
assistant than any other person whom I could lay my hand on. I should
have tried Mr. Blake as well—but for one obstacle in the way. _He_ saw
the drift of my proceedings at a very early date; and, with his
interest in Miss Verinder, any mutual understanding was impossible
between him and me. I trouble your ladyship with these particulars to
show you that I have kept the family secret within the family circle. I
am the only outsider who knows it—and my professional existence depends
on holding my tongue.”
Here I felt that _my_ professional existence depended on not holding
_my_ tongue. To be held up before my mistress, in my old age, as a sort
of deputy-policeman, was, once again, more than my Christianity was
strong enough to bear.
“I beg to inform your ladyship,” I said, “that I never, to my
knowledge, helped this abominable detective business, in any way, from
first to last; and I summon Sergeant Cuff to contradict me, if he
dares!”
Having given vent in those words, I felt greatly relieved. Her ladyship
honoured me by a little friendly pat on the shoulder. I looked with
righteous indignation at the Sergeant, to see what he thought of such a
testimony as _that!_ The Sergeant looked back like a lamb, and seemed
to like me better than ever.
My lady informed him that he might continue his statement. “I
understand,” she said, “that you have honestly done your best, in what
you believe to be my interest. I am ready to hear what you have to say
next.”
“What I have to say next,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “relates to Rosanna
Spearman. I recognised the young woman, as your ladyship may remember,
when she brought the washing-book into this room. Up to that time I was
inclined to doubt whether Miss Verinder had trusted her secret to
anyone. When I saw Rosanna, I altered my mind. I suspected her at once
of being privy to the suppression of the Diamond. The poor creature has
met her death by a dreadful end, and I don’t want your ladyship to
think, now she’s gone, that I was unduly hard on her. If this had been
a common case of thieving, I should have given Rosanna the benefit of
the doubt just as freely as I should have given it to any of the other
servants in the house. Our experience of the Reformatory women is, that
when tried in service—and when kindly and judiciously treated—they
prove themselves in the majority of cases to be honestly penitent, and
honestly worthy of the pains taken with them. But this was not a common
case of thieving. It was a case—in my mind—of a deeply planned fraud,
with the owner of the Diamond at the bottom of it. Holding this view,
the first consideration which naturally presented itself to me, in
connection with Rosanna, was this: Would Miss Verinder be satisfied
(begging your ladyship’s pardon) with leading us all to think that the
Moonstone was merely lost? Or would she go a step further, and delude
us into believing that the Moonstone was stolen? In the latter event
there was Rosanna Spearman—with the character of a thief—ready to her
hand; the person of all others to lead your ladyship off, and to lead
me off, on a false scent.”
Was it possible (I asked myself) that he could put his case against
Miss Rachel and Rosanna in a more horrid point of view than this? It
_was_ possible, as you shall now see.
“I had another reason for suspecting the deceased woman,” he said,
“which appears to me to have been stronger still. Who would be the very
person to help Miss Verinder in raising money privately on the Diamond?
Rosanna Spearman. No young lady in Miss Verinder’s position could
manage such a risky matter as that by herself. A go-between she must
have, and who so fit, I ask again, as Rosanna Spearman? Your ladyship’s
deceased housemaid was at the top of her profession when she was a
thief. She had relations, to my certain knowledge, with one of the few
men in London (in the money-lending line) who would advance a large sum
on such a notable jewel as the Moonstone, without asking awkward
questions, or insisting on awkward conditions. Bear this in mind, my
lady; and now let me show you how my suspicions have been justified by
Rosanna’s own acts, and by the plain inferences to be drawn from them.”
He thereupon passed the whole of Rosanna’s proceedings under review.
You are already as well acquainted with those proceedings as I am; and
you will understand how unanswerably this part of his report fixed the
guilt of being concerned in the disappearance of the Moonstone on the
memory of the poor dead girl. Even my mistress was daunted by what he
said now. She made him no answer when he had done. It didn’t seem to
matter to the Sergeant whether he was answered or not. On he went
(devil take him!), just as steady as ever.
“Having stated the whole case as I understand it,” he said, “I have
only to tell your ladyship, now, what I propose to do next. I see two
ways of bringing this inquiry successfully to an end. One of those ways
I look upon as a certainty. The other, I admit, is a bold experiment,
and nothing more. Your ladyship shall decide. Shall we take the
certainty first?”
My mistress made him a sign to take his own way, and choose for
himself.
“Thank you,” said the Sergeant. “We’ll begin with the certainty, as
your ladyship is so good as to leave it to me. Whether Miss Verinder
remains at Frizinghall, or whether she returns here, I propose, in
either case, to keep a careful watch on all her proceedings—on the
people she sees, on the rides and walks she may take, and on the
letters she may write and receive.”
“What next?” asked my mistress.
“I shall next,” answered the Sergeant, “request your ladyship’s leave
to introduce into the house, as a servant in the place of Rosanna
Spearman, a woman accustomed to private inquiries of this sort, for
whose discretion I can answer.”
“What next?” repeated my mistress.
“Next,” proceeded the Sergeant, “and last, I propose to send one of my
brother-officers to make an arrangement with that money-lender in
London, whom I mentioned just now as formerly acquainted with Rosanna
Spearman—and whose name and address, your ladyship may rely on it, have
been communicated by Rosanna to Miss Verinder. I don’t deny that the
course of action I am now suggesting will cost money, and consume time.
But the result is certain. We run a line round the Moonstone, and we
draw that line closer and closer till we find it in Miss Verinder’s
possession, supposing she decides to keep it. If her debts press, and
she decides on sending it away, then we have our man ready, and we meet
the Moonstone on its arrival in London.”
To hear her own daughter made the subject of such a proposal as this,
stung my mistress into speaking angrily for the first time.
“Consider your proposal declined, in every particular,” she said. “And
go on to your other way of bringing the inquiry to an end.”
“My other way,” said the Sergeant, going on as easy as ever, “is to try
that bold experiment to which I have alluded. I think I have formed a
pretty correct estimate of Miss Verinder’s temperament. She is quite
capable (according to my belief) of committing a daring fraud. But she
is too hot and impetuous in temper, and too little accustomed to deceit
as a habit, to act the hypocrite in small things, and to restrain
herself under all provocations. Her feelings, in this case, have
repeatedly got beyond her control, at the very time when it was plainly
her interest to conceal them. It is on this peculiarity in her
character that I now propose to act. I want to give her a great shock
suddenly, under circumstances that will touch her to the quick. In
plain English, I want to tell Miss Verinder, without a word of warning,
of Rosanna’s death—on the chance that her own better feelings will
hurry her into making a clean breast of it. Does your ladyship accept
_that_ alternative?”
My mistress astonished me beyond all power of expression. She answered
him on the instant:
“Yes; I do.”
“The pony-chaise is ready,” said the Sergeant. “I wish your ladyship
good morning.”
My lady held up her hand, and stopped him at the door.
“My daughter’s better feelings shall be appealed to, as you propose,”
she said. “But I claim the right, as her mother, of putting her to the
test myself. You will remain here, if you please; and I will go to
Frizinghall.”
For once in his life, the great Cuff stood speechless with amazement,
like an ordinary man.
My mistress rang the bell, and ordered her waterproof things. It was
still pouring with rain; and the close carriage had gone, as you know,
with Miss Rachel to Frizinghall. I tried to dissuade her ladyship from
facing the severity of the weather. Quite useless! I asked leave to go
with her, and hold the umbrella. She wouldn’t hear of it. The
pony-chaise came round, with the groom in charge. “You may rely on two
things,” she said to Sergeant Cuff, in the hall. “I will try the
experiment on Miss Verinder as boldly as you could try it yourself. And
I will inform you of the result, either personally or by letter, before
the last train leaves for London tonight.”
With that, she stepped into the chaise, and, taking the reins herself,
drove off to Frizinghall.
CHAPTER XXII
My mistress having left us, I had leisure to think of Sergeant Cuff. I
found him sitting in a snug corner of the hall, consulting his
memorandum book, and curling up viciously at the corners of the lips.
“Making notes of the case?” I asked.
“No,” said the Sergeant. “Looking to see what my next professional
engagement is.”
“Oh!” I said. “You think it’s all over then, here?”
“I think,” answered Sergeant Cuff, “that Lady Verinder is one of the
cleverest women in England. I also think a rose much better worth
looking at than a diamond. Where is the gardener, Mr. Betteredge?”
There was no getting a word more out of him on the matter of the
Moonstone. He had lost all interest in his own inquiry; and he would
persist in looking for the gardener. An hour afterwards, I heard them
at high words in the conservatory, with the dog-rose once more at the
bottom of the dispute.
In the meantime, it was my business to find out whether Mr. Franklin
persisted in his resolution to leave us by the afternoon train. After
having been informed of the conference in my lady’s room, and of how it
had ended, he immediately decided on waiting to hear the news from
Frizinghall. This very natural alteration in his plans—which, with
ordinary people, would have led to nothing in particular—proved, in Mr.
Franklin’s case, to have one objectionable result. It left him
unsettled, with a legacy of idle time on his hands, and, in so doing,
it let out all the foreign sides of his character, one on the top of
another, like rats out of a bag.
Now as an Italian-Englishman, now as a German-Englishman, and now as a
French-Englishman, he drifted in and out of all the sitting-rooms in