The Moonstone: The Discovery of the Truth 3: 8 Summary & Analysis

In an unexpected “visit from Mr. Bruff,” Bruff asks Blake to promise not to visit Rachel again. Bruff both believes Rachel’s story and thinks “there must be some dreadful mistake somewhere” that accounts for her having seen Franklin take the Diamond. Bruff hopes they can move forward and focus on “what we can discover in the future.” Namely, he knows that Mr. Luker will withdraw the Moonstone from the bank in a few weeks, at the end of June, and he plans to follow Luker when he does so and discover who actually pawned the Diamond. The Indians are likely to do the same, which makes this a dangerous game.

Franklin finds Bruff’s plan reasonable, but he cannot stand to wait two weeks, and decides to try to contact Sergeant Cuff in the meantime. He visits Cuff’s country retirement cottage—but Cuff has just left for Ireland to learn something new about rose gardening, and so Franklin simply leaves a note and returns home, where he stays up most of the night pondering how the theft was possible, and eventually wondering whether anything exists at all. The next morning, he rediscovers the letter Betteredge had left him, which asks him to talk with “Mr. Candy’s remarkable-looking assistant” Ezra Jennings, and he writes a “perfectly commonplace” reply. He thinks through Rachel’s birthday dinner and all the guests present, and decides to return to Yorkshire to get a full guest list from Betteredge.

Franklin misses the first train to Yorkshire and must wait three hours for the next; during this time, he decides to visit all the guests he can remember who live in London: Mr. Murthwaite, Godfrey Ablewhite, and Miss Clack. He goes to get their addresses from Mr. Bruff, who denounces him as “fanciful.” Bruff says that Godfrey’s whereabouts are unknown, and the other two guests are out of England for the time being. Franklin visits Godfrey’s club, where some of Godfrey’s friends inform him that Godfrey had pursued and broken off an engagement with a rich young heiress, and that one of Clack’s friends had left him 5,000 pounds as inheritance, with which he decided to vacation in Europe. In fact, he has already left—the morning before, just like Cuff. “Depressed in spirits,” Franklin goes to Frizinghall.

When he reaches Frizinghall, Franklin sends notice to Betteredge and then visits Mr. Candy, who “had expressed a special wish to see [him].” Franklin is astonished to see Candy shriveled and incapacitated by his illness, utterly unrecognizable except for his “tendency to vulgar smartness in his dress.” Franklin brings up the Diamond, explaining that he has learned the Moonstone might still be found and that he is trying to investigate the night of its disappearance. He immediately realizes that Candy is incapable of following his speech and instead turns to the letter Candy sent to Betteredge. Although he insists his memory is strong, Candy cannot remember its topic—except that it involved Rachel’s birthday. Franklin gives up and switches “to topics of local interest” for some half-hour, until he feels it appropriate to leave. On his way out, disappointed at Candy’s lapsed memory, Franklin meets Ezra Jennings.