The Moonstone
asked. ‘I thought I heard Miss Rachel warning them to keep clear of the
door.’
“‘None of the ladies made the smear,’ Penelope answered. ‘I left Miss
Rachel in bed at twelve last night. And I noticed the door, and there
was nothing wrong with it then.’
“‘Oughtn’t you to mention this to Mr. Seegrave, Penelope?’
“‘I wouldn’t say a word to help Mr. Seegrave for anything that could be
offered to me!’
“She went to her work, and I went to mine.
“My work, sir, was to make your bed, and to put your room tidy. It was
the happiest hour I had in the whole day. I used to kiss the pillow on
which your head had rested all night. No matter who has done it since,
you have never had your clothes folded as nicely as I folded them for
you. Of all the little knick-knacks in your dressing-case, there wasn’t
one that had so much as a speck on it. You never noticed it, any more
than you noticed me. I beg your pardon; I am forgetting myself. I will
make haste, and go on again.
“Well, I went in that morning to do my work in your room. There was
your nightgown tossed across the bed, just as you had thrown it off. I
took it up to fold it—and I saw the stain of the paint from Miss
Rachel’s door!
“I was so startled by the discovery that I ran out with the nightgown
in my hand, and made for the back stairs, and locked myself into my own
room, to look at it in a place where nobody could intrude and interrupt
me.
“As soon as I got my breath again, I called to mind my talk with
Penelope, and I said to myself, ‘Here’s the proof that he was in Miss
Rachel’s sitting-room between twelve last night, and three this
morning!’
“I shall not tell you in plain words what was the first suspicion that
crossed my mind, when I had made that discovery. You would only be
angry—and, if you were angry, you might tear my letter up and read no
more of it.
“Let it be enough, if you please, to say only this. After thinking it
over to the best of my ability, I made it out that the thing wasn’t
likely, for a reason that I will tell you. If you had been in Miss
Rachel’s sitting-room, at that time of night, with Miss Rachel’s
knowledge (and if you had been foolish enough to forget to take care of
the wet door) _she_ would have reminded you—_she_ would never have let
you carry away such a witness against her, as the witness I was looking
at now! At the same time, I own I was not completely certain in my own
mind that I had proved my own suspicion to be wrong. You will not have
forgotten that I have owned to hating Miss Rachel. Try to think, if you
can, that there was a little of that hatred in all this. It ended in my
determining to keep the nightgown, and to wait, and watch, and see what
use I might make of it. At that time, please to remember, not the ghost
of an idea entered my head that _you_ had stolen the Diamond.”
There, I broke off in the reading of the letter for the second time.
I had read those portions of the miserable woman’s confession which
related to myself, with unaffected surprise, and, I can honestly add,
with sincere distress. I had regretted, truly regretted, the aspersion
which I had thoughtlessly cast on her memory, before I had seen a line
of her letter. But when I had advanced as far as the passage which is
quoted above, I own I felt my mind growing bitterer and bitterer
against Rosanna Spearman as I went on. “Read the rest for yourself,” I
said, handing the letter to Betteredge across the table. “If there is
anything in it that I _must_ look at, you can tell me as you go on.”
“I understand you, Mr. Franklin,” he answered. “It’s natural, sir, in
_you_. And, God help us all!” he added, in a lower tone, “it’s no less
natural in _her_.”
I proceed to copy the continuation of the letter from the original, in
my own possession:—
“Having determined to keep the nightgown, and to see what use my love,
or my revenge (I hardly know which) could turn it to in the future, the
next thing to discover was how to keep it without the risk of being
found out.
“There was only one way—to make another nightgown exactly like it,
before Saturday came, and brought the laundry-woman and her inventory
to the house.
“I was afraid to put it off till next day (the Friday); being in doubt
lest some accident might happen in the interval. I determined to make
the new nightgown on that same day (the Thursday), while I could count,
if I played my cards properly, on having my time to myself. The first
thing to do (after locking up your nightgown in my drawer) was to go
back to your bedroom—not so much to put it to rights (Penelope would
have done that for me, if I had asked her) as to find out whether you
had smeared off any of the paint-stain from your nightgown, on the bed,
or on any piece of furniture in the room.
“I examined everything narrowly, and at last, I found a few streaks of
the paint on the inside of your dressing-gown—not the linen
dressing-gown you usually wore in that summer season, but a flannel
dressing-gown which you had with you also. I suppose you felt chilly
after walking to and fro in nothing but your nightdress, and put on the
warmest thing you could find. At any rate, there were the stains, just
visible, on the inside of the dressing-gown. I easily got rid of these
by scraping away the stuff of the flannel. This done, the only proof
left against you was the proof locked up in my drawer.
“I had just finished your room when I was sent for to be questioned by
Mr. Seegrave, along with the rest of the servants. Next came the
examination of all our boxes. And then followed the most extraordinary
event of the day—to _me_—since I had found the paint on your nightgown.
This event came out of the second questioning of Penelope Betteredge by
Superintendent Seegrave.
“Penelope returned to us quite beside herself with rage at the manner
in which Mr. Seegrave had treated her. He had hinted, beyond the
possibility of mistaking him, that he suspected her of being the thief.
We were all equally astonished at hearing this, and we all asked, Why?
“‘Because the Diamond was in Miss Rachel’s sitting-room,’ Penelope
answered. ‘And because I was the last person in the sitting-room at
night!’
“Almost before the words had left her lips, I remembered that another
person had been in the sitting-room later than Penelope. That person
was yourself. My head whirled round, and my thoughts were in dreadful
confusion. In the midst of it all, something in my mind whispered to me
that the smear on your nightgown might have a meaning entirely
different to the meaning which I had given to it up to that time. ‘If
the last person who was in the room is the person to be suspected,’ I
thought to myself, ‘the thief is not Penelope, but Mr. Franklin Blake!’
“In the case of any other gentleman, I believe I should have been
ashamed of suspecting him of theft, almost as soon as the suspicion had
passed through my mind.
“But the bare thought that _you_ had let yourself down to my level, and
that I, in possessing myself of your nightgown, had also possessed
myself of the means of shielding you from being discovered, and
disgraced for life—I say, sir, the bare thought of this seemed to open
such a chance before me of winning your good will, that I passed
blindfold, as one may say, from suspecting to believing. I made up my
mind, on the spot, that you had shown yourself the busiest of anybody
in fetching the police, as a blind to deceive us all; and that the hand
which had taken Miss Rachel’s jewel could by no possibility be any
other hand than yours.
“The excitement of this new discovery of mine must, I think, have
turned my head for a while. I felt such a devouring eagerness to see
you—to try you with a word or two about the Diamond, and to _make_ you
look at me, and speak to me, in that way—that I put my hair tidy, and
made myself as nice as I could, and went to you boldly in the library
where I knew you were writing.
“You had left one of your rings upstairs, which made as good an excuse
for my intrusion as I could have desired. But, oh, sir! if you have
ever loved, you will understand how it was that all my courage cooled,
when I walked into the room, and found myself in your presence. And
then, you looked up at me so coldly, and you thanked me for finding
your ring in such an indifferent manner, that my knees trembled under
me, and I felt as if I should drop on the floor at your feet. When you
had thanked me, you looked back, if you remember, at your writing. I
was so mortified at being treated in this way, that I plucked up spirit
enough to speak. I said, ‘This is a strange thing about the Diamond,
sir.’ And you looked up again, and said, ‘Yes, it is!’ You spoke
civilly (I can’t deny that); but still you kept a distance—a cruel
distance between us. Believing, as I did, that you had got the lost
Diamond hidden about you, while you were speaking, your coolness so
provoked me that I got bold enough, in the heat of the moment, to give
you a hint. I said, ‘They will never find the Diamond, sir, will they?
No! nor the person who took it—I’ll answer for that.’ I nodded, and
smiled at you, as much as to say, ‘I know!’ _This_ time, you looked up
at me with something like interest in your eyes; and I felt that a few
more words on your side and mine might bring out the truth. Just at
that moment, Mr. Betteredge spoilt it all by coming to the door. I knew
his footstep, and I also knew that it was against his rules for me to
be in the library at that time of day—let alone being there along with
you. I had only just time to get out of my own accord, before he could
come in and tell me to go. I was angry and disappointed; but I was not
entirely without hope for all that. The ice, you see, was broken
between us—and I thought I would take care, on the next occasion, that
Mr. Betteredge was out of the way.
“When I got back to the servants’ hall, the bell was going for our
dinner. Afternoon already! and the materials for making the new
nightgown were still to be got! There was but one chance of getting
them. I shammed ill at dinner; and so secured the whole of the interval
from then till tea-time to my own use.
“What I was about, while the household believed me to be lying down in
my own room; and how I spent the night, after shamming ill again at
tea-time, and having been sent up to bed, there is no need to tell you.
Sergeant Cuff discovered that much, if he discovered nothing more. And
I can guess how. I was detected (though I kept my veil down) in the
draper’s shop at Frizinghall. There was a glass in front of me, at the
counter where I was buying the longcloth; and—in that glass—I saw one
of the shopmen point to my shoulder and whisper to another. At night
again, when I was secretly at work, locked into my room, I heard the
breathing of the women servants who suspected me, outside my door.
“It didn’t matter then; it doesn’t matter now. On the Friday morning,
hours before Sergeant Cuff entered the house, there was the new
nightgown—to make up your number in place of the nightgown that I had
got—made, wrung out, dried, ironed, marked, and folded as the laundry
woman folded all the others, safe in your drawer. There was no fear (if
the linen in the house was examined) of the newness of the nightgown
betraying me. All your underclothing had been renewed, when you came to
our house—I suppose on your return home from foreign parts.
“The next thing was the arrival of Sergeant Cuff; and the next great
surprise was the announcement of what _he_ thought about the smear on
the door.
“I had believed you to be guilty (as I have owned), more because I
wanted you to be guilty than for any other reason. And now, the
Sergeant had come round by a totally different way to the same
conclusion (respecting the nightgown) as mine! And I had got the dress