The Moonstone (1868) is the last of what have sometimes been called Wilkie Collins’s four great novels of the 1860s (the other three being The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862) and Armadale (1864). It rivals The Woman in White to be considered his best known novel. T. S. Eliot said it was “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels” (Introduction, p. 7). If it’s the first, we shouldn’t expect to find it a typical example, or that it should already contain all the elements of the mature, developed form.

There are murders, one in the prologue and another, of an important character, in the body of the story, but this second killing doesn’t happen till almost the end of the novel and it isn’t the crime which is being investigated. None of the other characters seems to have any doubt as to who the murderers are: that isn’t a part of the mystery, which is concerned with the disappearance (presumably theft) of an enormous, flawed but yet extremely valuable yellow diamond, known as the Moonstone.

The novel introduces a celebrated detective, Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard, renowned for his deductive powers. But Cuff withdraws from the proceedings about 40% of the way through the story, having asserted that the diamond was not stolen, and leaving much of the task of accounting for its disappearance to other characters. Cuff reluctantly emerges from retirement late the story, to help to rectify his initial “mistake”.

A notable feature of the story is that, with one important exception, the main characters don’t seem to care very much about the diamond’s monetary value, great though that is. Rachel Verinder has been given the Moonstone on her eighteenth birthday. It had previously been in the possession of an estranged brother of her mother’s, whose will left it with instructions to give it to Rachel. The uncle believed the diamond to be cursed and, it is strongly implied, left it to his niece expressly with the aim that it should cause mischief in Lady Verinder’s household.

The diamond was taken later on the night of Rachel’s birthday. She appeared to be much less concerned with the pecuniary loss than with something she witnessed that night that persuaded her that she had been despicably betrayed by someone she loved. She showed no inclination to help Sergeant Cuff’s investigation. Not long afterwards, her mother, Lady Verinder, died, leaving a substantial estate. Rachel was now a wealthy woman — though not wealthy enough for one suitor who quickly had second thoughts when he learned that, though she had a large income from the estate, she had just a life interest in the land, without a power of sale or the ability to raise money on it.

The diamond was never recovered and Rachel does not seem to have been at all put out or inconvenienced by the loss of its value. She has reasons for not being willing to help Sergeant Cuff: when it becomes clear that a paint smear on a nightgown may implicate the thief, she flatly refuses to allow her own clothes to be inspected. Shortly after that, Lady Verinder pays off the sergeant and he goes back to London.

So, the story is not about recovering the stolen goods or the punishment of the criminals but rather about the effort to find out what happened: to unravel the mystery. Cuff’s part in this is significant. He is half right in believing that the diamond was not stolen, at least not initially, though that changed almost immediately. He was absolutely right in his conclusion that Rosanna Spearman had posted a “memorandum” to the Yollands’ house in Cobb’s Hole, containing instructions for the recovery of the box she had hidden in the Shivering Sands. (The actual addressee is their daughter Lucy, Rosanna’s friend.)

But it is the unfortunate doctor’s assistant, Ezra Jennings, who plays the decisive role in discovering why and how the Moonstone was taken. Jennings has reconstructed the vital fact that Dr Candy has forgotten: that Franklin Blake had unknowingly taken a dose of laudanum the night of Rachel’s birthday. Jennings put that fact together with Franklin Blake’s anxiety as to the vulnerability of the diamond to theft (and of its possessor to violence), and formed a theory as to what must have happened. Then he put the theory to the test.

Ezra Jennings’s experiment is at once the plot’s great weakness and its sensational climax. To remove it would be to deprive the novel of much of its suspense and excitement — while at the same time making the story much more plausible. Ezra Jennings believes, and persuades Franklin Blake, that if they can exactly recreate the circumstances and conditions in which the Moonstone disappeared, they can expect a recurrence of the events of that night, and they’ll finally know what happened.

At the time of the Moonstone’s disappearance, Franklin Blake had been sleeping badly, having recently given up smoking. That fact, combined with his professed scepticism about doctors and medicine, had been the reason why Dr Candy had given him a dose of laudanum, without his consent. To replicate the conditions of that night, Blake now agrees to give up smoking again.

“From this moment.”

“That is the first step. The next step is to reproduce, as nearly as we can, the domestic circumstances which surrounded you last year.” (p. 445)

Of course, it proves impossible to reproduce everything exactly. The carpets have been taken up since Lady Verinder has died, Rachel is living in London and most of the servants have been laid off. Gabriel Betteredge, who narrated the first part of the story, has been keeping the house with just a few other servants. They do their best to restore things but there is one big thing that’s missing: the Moonstone itself. Blake can’t help knowing that the stone is no longer there, and no longer in any immediate danger of being taken again. Whatever he might be feeling anxious about, it isn’t that.

Insofar as the aim of the experiment is to prove that Franklin Blake removed the Moonstone so as to put it in a safer place, it is quite unnecessary. Blake claims that he needs proof if he is to believe that he acted under the combined influence of laudanum, anxiety and nicotine withdrawal, but this should not be necessary. Clearly, he took the diamond: Rachel saw him do it, and the nightgown that Rosanna hid corroborates that. He himself knows that he didn’t consciously or intentionally steal the jewel. So, what other explanation could there be?

On hearing Ezra Jennings’s theory, Rachel immediately realizes that it must be the truth. She doesn’t need empirical evidence to convince her. Bruff, the solicitor, strongly advises against going ahead, and the cautious, unimaginative stick-in-the-mud is on this occasion quite right. What is to be gained from the experiment? Why risk an inconclusive result, which might draw suspicion on Blake? Gabriel, caught up in his familiar “detective-fever”, happily goes along with the test, but he least of all requires proof that Franklin Blake is not a thief.

Of course, Ezra Jennings has a second aim: to find out what Blake did with the Moonstone after he had removed it from Rachel’s cabinet. In this respect, the experiment is a complete failure, though the information eventually emerges from another source.

This episode is full of suspense, yet the experiment really adds nothing to the unfolding of the plot. When I first read the novel, I found the unlikelihood of Blake’s repeating exactly the actions he had taken the previous time he’d been under the influence of laudanum distracted my attention from the rest of the novel. The book seemed to me to be on that account less satisfactory than either The Woman in White or Armadale. On this rereading I see what I missed before, that The Moonstone has similar strengths to those of the other two novels.

Dr Candy gave Franklin Blake the laudanum because he was annoyed by the latter’s dismissal of the possibility that he might benefit from it. The doctor, in other words, was acting as an advocate for, a promoter of, the drug. He wanted to persuade the young sceptic that there was some good to be had from it. I’m wondering if the author might have had a similar aim in mind, and if that’s why this episode, which in my view is neither necessary nor helpful to the plot, is included. The first thing I ever read about Wilkie Collins, a long time ago — it was probably in one of the Sunday papers — described him as “a frank and happy addict of the drug”. So maybe it wasn’t enough for his purposes to establish that Franklin Blake had been given laudanum on the night of Rachel’s birthday in 1848; better to show him knowingly taking a stronger dose the following year.

The characters are, for the most part, either flawed or idiosyncratic. Franklin Blake, who is more or less the hero, and loved by two women, Rachel Verinder and the unfortunate Rosanna Spearman, is irresponsible with money and almost ruins one of his creditors by failing to pay the debt on time. Rosanna’s criminal past is known to her employer, to Gabriel Betteredge and to Sergeant Cuff, who believe (correctly) that she has mended her ways, but she hides the evidence of what she believes to be Blake’s guilt so well that it remains undiscovered for a year, before killing herself in quicksand.

Gabriel Betteredge, harmlessly if rather ludicrously, relies on his pipe and a reading of Robinson Crusoe for the solution to every question that confronts him. He proudly rejects the siren call of rationality:

I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason. This enabled me to hold firm to my lady’s view, which was my view also. This roused my spirit, and made me put a bold face on it before Sergeant Cuff. Profit, good friends, I beseech you, by my example. It will save you from many troubles of the vexing sort. Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your own good! (p. 208)

Later, we find him urging Franklin Blake not to get too hung up on the facts:

“Facts?” he repeated. “Take a drop more grog, Mr Franklin, and you’ll soon get over the weakness of believing in facts! Foul play, sir!” (p. 361)

Gabriel is the character who provides the reader’s first impression of Rachel Verinder:

To put it seriously, my dear pretty Miss Rachel, possessing a host of graces and attractions, had one defect, which strict impartiality compels me to acknowledge. She was unlike most other girls of her age, in this — that she had ideas of her own, and was stiff-necked enough to set the fashions themselves at defiance, if the fashions didn’t suit her views. In trifles, this independence of hers was all well enough; but in matters of importance it carried her (as my lady thought, and as I thought) too far. She judged for herself, as few women twice her age judge in general; never asked your advice; never told you beforehand what she was going to do; never came with secrets and confidences to anybody, from her mother downwards. In little things and great, with people she loved and people she hated (and she did both with equal heartiness), Miss Rachel always went on a way of her own, sufficient for herself in the joys and sorrows of her life. Over and over again I have heard my lady say, “Rachel’s best friend and Rachel’s worst enemy are, one and the other — Rachel herself.” (p. 87)

When Rachel witnesses Franklin Blake apparently stealing the Moonstone she doesn’t speak of it to anybody: not to Blake himself, to her mother, or to Sergeant Cuff, leading the last of these to draw the wrong conclusion as to who it is who hasn’t stolen the jewel (but has removed it). Gabriel’s picture of Rachel is entirely at odds with Rosanna’s, who writes in a letter to Franklin Blake (which he doesn’t receive till about a year after her death) that she “hated” (p. 363) Rachel.

“If she had been really as pretty as you thought her, I might have borne it better. No; I believe I should have been more spiteful against her still. Suppose you put Miss Rachel into a servant’s dress, and took her ornaments off — ? I don’t know what is the use of my writing in this way. It can’t be denied that she had a bad figure; she was too thin … But it does stir one up to hear Miss Rachel called pretty, when one knows all the time that it’s her dress that does it, and her confidence in herself …” (p. 363)

Rosanna is one of two characters, the other being Ezra Jennings, who lead miserable lives before suffering horrible and painful deaths. The novel treats them with sympathy, which is more than can be said for most of their fellow characters.

Miss Drusilla Clack is a minor character who narrates the opening chapters of the second part of the book (the first part consisting entirely of the narrative of Gabriel Betteredge). She is a straitlaced, prim, evangelical Christian woman who greatly admires Godfrey Ablewhite for his work with charities like the Mothers’-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. It’s from her that we first hear about that gentleman’s short-lived engagement to Rachel Verinder. He tells Miss Clack that Rachel has “taken a sudden resolution to break the engagement” (p. 296).

“… Reflection has convince her that she will best consult her welfare and mine by retracting a rash promise, and leaving me free to make some happier choice elsewhere. That is the only reason she will give, and the only answer she will make to every question that I can ask of her.” (p. 296)

Godfrey has accepted Rachel’s apparently capricious decision without complaint. The next narrator, the solicitor Mr Bruff, presents the breaking of the engagement in a rather different light. He has told Rachel that Godfrey Ablewhite lost no time in inspecting Lady Verinder’s will at Doctors’ Commons even before it has been admitted to probate, so learning that Rachel has only a life interest in the estate. His ready acquiescence in her decision is cofirmation in her and the lawyer’s eyes that he had wanted to marry her for mercenary reasons.

But if the younger Mr Ablewhite had succeeded in deceiving Miss Clack as to his character and motives, she is much more clearsighted when it comes to his father. Of him she writes:

I am not ignorant that old Mr Ablewhite has a reputation generally (especially among his inferiors) of being a remarkably good-natured man. According to my observation of him, he deserves his reputation as long as he has his own way, and not a moment longer. (p. 301)

She foresees that the father will make much more of a fuss about the ending of the engagement than his son does, and so it turns out. Ablewhite Senior takes it as a personal affront. He had been appointed Rachel’s guardian by Lady Verinder’s will, but now he refuses to act in that capacity.

The novel contains a lot more besides. It’s a big, many threaded story with convincing, well delineated characters and a plot that is skilfully crafted to fit together satisfactorily — even if I remain sceptical about one aspect of that plot, the laudanum experiment.

Edition: Penguin Classics paperback, 1966, 1986; ellipses added.