The Moonstone: The Loss of the Diamond: 11 Summary & Analysis

Betteredge turns to the events after Rachel’s party. In the drawing-room, Rachel decides that she plans to safeguard the Diamond in her Indian cabinet. Julia protests that this cabinet does not have a lock and proposes that she take charge of the Diamond herself, but Rachel refuses. Julia insists they talk in the morning, and Rachel flirts with Franklin in the corner before heading off to bed. Franklin tells Betteredge and Godfrey that he perhaps “took Mr. Murthwaite too seriously,” and Betteredge points out that Franklin and Godfrey get along despite their competition over Rachel. After the others go to bed, Betteredge sets loose the dogs and does his rounds. He is nervous and cannot sleep until sunrise, but hears nothing in the house.

Only a few hours after he falls asleep, Betteredge awakens to find Penelope screaming: “The Diamond is gone!” Upstairs, Rachel stands mortified beside her open Indian cabinet, and then locks herself inside her room, although she lets her astonished mother inside. When they hear the news, Godfrey and Franklin are also shocked and mystified, although after taking his coffee, Franklin orders the servants not to lock or unlock any of the doors and windows, looks around Rachel’s room to ensure the Diamond has not fallen, and sends Penelope to fetch Rachel for questioning. However, only Julia comes out; she reports that Rachel is too “overwhelmed” to speak, and that the family must call the police. Franklin offers to do it, and to make sure the Indian jugglers are apprehended at once. He suggests to Betteredge that one of the Indians might have hidden in the house all evening.

Betteredge wonders how one of the Indians could have stolen the Diamond when the doors and windows stayed locked and the dogs were running around all night. After breakfast, he explains the story of the Indians to Julia, who remains “far more perturbed about her daughter [Rachel],” whose fixation on the Diamond was uncharacteristic of her personality. Godfrey and the servants also grow withdrawn and ponder the theft. Then Franklin comes back and declares, inexplicably, that he feels sorry for “the poor ill-used Indians” who are now in jail for the crime, but whom he has determined must be innocent. He reports that the police confirmed the Indians were in the nearby town of Frizinghall all night—meaning they could not have been at the Verinder estate—but the police threw them in jail anyway on a petty, unrelated charge.

After a few minutes, the austere police Superintendent, Seegrave, comes to the estate and investigates. He determines that “some person in the house” must have been responsible for the robbery. The servants are the first suspects, and he questions them before turning to Penelope (who first learned about the robbery), and then Rachel, who claims through her bedroom door to “have nothing to tell the policeman.” After talking to the men, Seegrave returns to Rachel’s room. Surprisingly, Rachel walks out and goes to talk with Franklin outside (or, as it looks from Betteredge’s position at the window, yell at him). She returns in a fury, kicks Seegrave out of her room, and locks herself back inside. Betteredge assumes she must be “mortally offended by our sending for the police,” but is confused that she would not do everything possible to try to get her diamond back.

Although Franklin, Godfrey, and Julia all probably know exactly what Rachel was yelling at Franklin about, none of them are willing to tell Betteredge or Seegrave, who begins interrogating Betteredge about the other servants. Betteredge defends them all, although he has his doubts about Rosanna Spearman. On his second round of questioning, Seegrave appears to begin suspecting the increasingly distraught Penelope of the crime. Finally, he asks Julia for permission to search the servants’ possessions—although she objects to their being “treated like thieves,” Betteredge offers his own keys and the other servants also oblige. There is “no Diamond or sign of a Diamond” anywhere in the house. Betteredge goes to the library in search of Franklin but instead, to his surprise, runs into Rosanna.

Betteredge “charged [Rosanna] with a breach of domestic discipline,” but she explains that she had gone to the library in order to deliver a ring Franklin Blake left upstairs. Betteredge sees her as peculiarly “out of [her] natural character.” He then meets Franklin, who explains that he is going to London to enlist the Chief Commissioner of Police in the search for the Diamond and then mentions that he, too, thinks that something is off with Rosanna. After bringing Franklin his ring, she declared that the Diamond—and its thief—would certainly never be found. Franklin worries that she will get herself into trouble with the police. Betteredge says he will tell Julia to rein in the foolishly pessimistic Rosanna. He soon discovers that she has fallen ill and returned to bed, and then wonders if maybe Rosanna just wanted an excuse to talk to Franklin.

Seegrave tells Betteredge that he believes the thief was collaborating with the Indians, whom he now plans to interrogate in prison. He goes with Franklin, Godfrey, and one of his inferior policemen to Frizinghall; beforehand, Franklin implores Betteredge to keep watch on Rosanna, but stops short of describing his conversation with Rachel. Rosanna soon has “what they call an hysterical attack;” for the rest of the day, Rachel remains locked in her room and Penelope remains convinced that she is the prime suspect. At night, Godfrey and Franklin return, reporting that, despite Mr. Murthwaite’s help with translation, the police’s interrogation of the Indians “had ended in nothing.” Betteredge promises that his next chapter will recount how “the darkness lifted a little” a few days later.