The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins [best motivational books of all time .TXT] 📗

who has done it since, you have never had your clothes folded as nicely as I folded them for you. Of all the little knickknacks 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 laundrywoman 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,