Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (626 page)

Breakfast had not been over long, when a telegram from Mr. Blake, the elder, arrived, in answer to his son. It informed us that he had laid hands (by help of his friend, the Commissioner) on the right man to help us. The name of him was Sergeant Cuff; and the arrival of him from London might be expected by the morning train.

At reading the name of the new police-officer, Mr. Franklin gave a start. It seems that he had heard some curious anecdotes about Sergeant Cuff, from his father’s lawyer, during his stay in London.

“I begin to hope we are seeing the end of our anxieties already,” he said. “If half the stories I have heard are true, when it comes to unravelling a mystery, there isn’t the equal in England of Sergeant Cuff!”

We all got excited and impatient as the time drew near for the appearance of this renowned and capable character. Superintendent Seegrave, returning to us at his appointed time, and hearing that the Sergeant was expected, instantly shut himself up in a room, with pen, ink, and paper, to make notes of the Report which would be certainly expected from him. I should have liked to have gone to the station myself, to fetch the Sergeant. But my lady’s carriage and horses were not to be thought of, even for the celebrated Cuff; and the pony-chaise was required later for Mr. Godfrey. He deeply regretted being obliged to leave his aunt at such an anxious time; and he kindly put off the hour of his departure till as late as the last train, for the purpose of hearing what the clever London police-officer thought of the case. But on Friday night he must be in town, having a Ladies’ Charity, in difficulties, waiting to consult him on Saturday morning.

When the time came for the Sergeant’s arrival, I went down to the gate to look out for him.

A fly from the railway drove up as I reached the lodge; and out got a grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean that he looked as if he had not got an ounce of flesh on his bones in any part of him. He was dressed all in decent black, with a white cravat round his neck. His face was as sharp as a hatchet, and the skin of it was as yellow and dry and withered as an autumn leaf. His eyes, of a steely light grey, had a very disconcerting trick, when they encountered your eyes, of looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself. His walk was soft; his voice was melancholy; his long lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might have been a parson, or an undertaker — or anything else you like, except what he really was. A more complete opposite to Superintendent Seegrave than Sergeant Cuff, and a less comforting officer to look at, for a family in distress, I defy you to discover, search where you may.

“Is this Lady Verinder’s?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am Sergeant Cuff.”

“This way, sir, if you please.”

On our road to the house, I mentioned my name and position in the family, to satisfy him that he might speak to me about the business on which my lady was to employ him. Not a word did he say about the business, however, for all that. He admired the grounds, and remarked that he felt the sea air very brisk and refreshing. I privately wondered, on my side, how the celebrated Cuff had got his reputation. We reached the house, in the temper of two strange dogs, coupled up together for the first time in their lives by the same chain.

Asking for my lady, and hearing that she was in one of the conservatories, we went round to the gardens at the back, and sent a servant to seek her. While we were waiting, Sergeant Cuff looked through the evergreen arch on our left, spied out our rosery, and walked straight in, with the first appearance of anything like interest that he had shown yet. To the gardener’s astonishment, and to my disgust, this celebrated policeman proved to be quite a mine of learning on the trumpery subject of rose-gardens.

“Ah, you’ve got the right exposure here to the south and sou’-west,” says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his melancholy voice. “This is the shape for a rosery — nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn’t to be gravel walks like these. Grass, Mr. Gardener — grass walks between your roses; gravel’s too hard for them. That’s a sweet pretty bed of white roses and blush roses. They always mix well together, don’t they? Here’s the white musk rose, Mr. Betteredge — our old English rose holding up its head along with the best and the newest of them. Pretty dear!” says the Sergeant, fondling the Musk Rose with his lanky fingers, and speaking to it as if he was speaking to a child.

This was a nice sort of man to recover Miss Rachel’s Diamond, and to find out the thief who stole it!

“You seem to be fond of roses, Sergeant?” I remarked.

“I haven’t much time to be fond of anything,” says Sergeant Cuff. “But when I
have
a moment’s fondness to bestow, most times, Mr. Betteredge, the roses get it. I began my life among them in my father’s nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses. There will be grass walks, Mr. Gardener, between my beds,” says the Sergeant, on whose mind the gravel paths of our rosery seemed to dwell unpleasantly.

“It seems an odd taste, sir,” I ventured to say, “for a man in your line of life.”

“If you will look about you (which most people won’t do),” says Sergeant Cuff, “you will see that the nature of a man’s tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man’s business. Show me any two things more opposite one from the other than a rose and a thief; and I’ll correct my tastes accordingly — if it isn’t too late at my time of life. You find the damask rose a goodish stock for most of the tender sorts, don’t you, Mr. Gardener? Ah! I thought so. Here’s a lady coming. Is it Lady Verinder?”

He had seen her before either I or the gardener had seen her, though we knew which way to look, and he didn’t. I began to think him rather a quicker man than he appeared to be at first sight.

The Sergeant’s appearance, or the Sergeant’s errand — one or both — seemed to cause my lady some little embarrassment. She was, for the first time in all my experience of her, at a loss what to say at an interview with a stranger. Sergeant Cuff put her at her ease directly. He asked if any other person had been employed about the robbery before we sent for him; and hearing that another person had been called in, and was now in the house, begged leave to speak to him before anything else was done.

My lady led the way back. Before he followed her, the Sergeant relieved his mind on the subject of the gravel walks by a parting word to the gardener. “Get her ladyship to try grass,” he said, with a sour look at the paths. “No gravel! no gravel!”

Why Superintendent Seegrave should have appeared to be several sizes smaller than life, on being presented to Sergeant Cuff, I can’t undertake to explain. I can only state the fact. They retired together; and remained a weary long time shut up from all mortal intrusion. When they came out, Mr. Superintendent was excited, and Mr. Sergeant was yawning.

“The Sergeant wishes to see Miss Verinder’s sitting-room,” says Mr. Seegrave, addressing me with great pomp and eagerness. “The Sergeant may have some questions to ask. Attend the Sergeant, if you please!”

While I was being ordered about in this way, I looked at the great Cuff. The great Cuff, on his side, looked at Superintendent Seegrave in that quietly expecting way which I have already noticed. I can’t affirm that he was on the watch for his brother officer’s speedy appearance in the character of an Ass — I can only say that I strongly suspected it.

I led the way up-stairs. The Sergeant went softly all over the Indian cabinet and all round the “boudoir;” asking questions (occasionally only of Mr. Superintendent, and continually of me), the drift of which I believe to have been equally unintelligible to both of us. In due time, his course brought him to the door, and put him face to face with the decorative painting that you know of. He laid one lean inquiring finger on the small smear, just under the lock, which Superintendent Seegrave had already noticed, when he reproved the women-servants for all crowding together into the room.

“That’s a pity,” says Sergeant Cuff. “How did it happen?”

He put the question to me. I answered that the women-servants had crowded into the room on the previous morning, and that some of their petticoats had done the mischief, “Superintendent Seegrave ordered them out, sir,” I added, “before they did any more harm.”

“Right!” says Mr. Superintendent in his military way. “I ordered them out. The petticoats did it, Sergeant — the petticoats did it.”

“Did you notice which petticoat did it?” asked Sergeant Cuff, still addressing himself, not to his brother-officer, but to me.

“No, sir.”

He turned to Superintendent Seegrave upon that, and said, “You noticed, I suppose?”

Mr. Superintendent looked a little taken aback; but he made the best of it. “I can’t charge my memory, Sergeant,” he said, “a mere trifle — a mere trifle.”

Sergeant Cuff looked at Mr. Seegrave, as he had looked at the gravel walks in the rosery, and gave us, in his melancholy way, the first taste of his quality which we had had yet.

“I made a private inquiry last week, Mr. Superintendent,” he said. “At one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there was a spot of ink on a table cloth that nobody could account for. In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet. Before we go a step further in this business we must see the petticoat that made the smear, and we must know for certain when that paint was wet.”

Mr. Superintendent — taking his set-down rather sulkily — asked if he should summon the women. Sergeant Cuff, after considering a minute, sighed, and shook his head.

“No,” he said, “we’ll take the matter of the paint first. It’s a question of Yes or No with the paint — which is short. It’s a question of petticoats with the women — which is long. What o’clock was it when the servants were in this room yesterday morning? Eleven o’clock — eh? Is there anybody in the house who knows whether that paint was wet or dry, at eleven yesterday morning?”

“Her ladyship’s nephew, Mr. Franklin Blake, knows,” I said.

“Is the gentleman in the house?”

Mr. Franklin was as close at hand as could be — waiting for his first chance of being introduced to the great Cuff. In half a minute he was in the room, and was giving his evidence as follows:

“That door, Sergeant,” he said, “has been painted by Miss Verinder, under my inspection, with my help, and in a vehicle of my own composition. The vehicle dries whatever colours may be used with it, in twelve hours.”

“Do you remember when the smeared bit was done, sir?” asked the Sergeant.

“Perfectly,” answered Mr. Franklin. “That was the last morsel of the door to be finished. We wanted to get it done, on Wednesday last — and I myself completed it by three in the afternoon, or soon after.”

“To-day is Friday,” said Sergeant Cuff, addressing himself to Superintendent Seegrave. “Let us reckon back, sir. At three on the Wednesday afternoon, that bit of the painting was completed. The vehicle dried it in twelve hours — that is to say, dried it by three o’clock on Thursday morning. At eleven on Thursday morning you held your inquiry here. Take three from eleven, and eight remains. That paint had been EIGHT HOURS DRY, Mr. Superintendent, when you supposed that the women-servants’ petticoats smeared it.”

First knock-down blow for Mr. Seegrave! If he had not suspected poor Penelope, I should have pitied him.

Having settled the question of the paint, Sergeant Cuff, from that moment, gave his brother-officer up as a bad job — and addressed himself to Mr. Franklin, as the more promising assistant of the two.

“It’s quite on the cards, sir,” he said, “that you have put the clue into our hands.”

As the words passed his lips, the bedroom door opened, and Miss Rachel came out among us suddenly.

She addressed herself to the Sergeant, without appearing to notice (or to heed) that he was a perfect stranger to her.

“Did you say,” she asked, pointing to Mr. Franklin, “that HE had put the clue into your hands?”

(“This is Miss Verinder,” I whispered, behind the Sergeant.)