"Having answered your question, miss," says the Sergeant, "I beg leave
to make an inquiry in my turn. There is a smear on the painting of your
door, here. Do you happen to know when it was done? or who did it?"
Instead of making any reply, Miss Rachel went on with her questions, as
if he had not spoken, or as if she had not heard him.
"Are you another police-officer?" she asked.
"I am Sergeant Cuff, miss, of the Detective Police."
"Do you think a young lady's advice worth having?"
"I shall be glad to hear it, miss."
"Do your duty by yourself--and don't allow Mr Franklin Blake to help
you!"
She said those words so spitefully, so savagely, with such an
extraordinary outbreak of ill-will towards Mr. Franklin, in her voice
and in her look, that--though I had known her from a baby, though I
loved and honoured her next to my lady herself--I was ashamed of Miss
Rachel for the first time in my life.
Sergeant Cuff's immovable eyes never stirred from off her face. "Thank
you, miss," he said. "Do you happen to know anything about the smear?
Might you have done it by accident yourself?"
"I know nothing about the smear."
With that answer, she turned away, and shut herself up again in
her bed-room. This time, I heard her--as Penelope had heard her
before--burst out crying as soon as she was alone again.
I couldn't bring myself to look at the Sergeant--I looked at Mr.
Franklin, who stood nearest to me. He seemed to be even more sorely
distressed at what had passed than I was.
"I told you I was uneasy about her," he said. "And now you see why."
"Miss Verinder appears to be a little out of temper about the loss of
her Diamond," remarked the Sergeant. "It's a valuable jewel. Natural
enough! natural enough!"
Here was the excuse that I had made for her (when she forgot herself
before Superintendent Seegrave, on the previous day) being made for her
over again, by a man who couldn't have had MY interest in making it--for
he was a perfect stranger! A kind of cold shudder ran through me, which
I couldn't account for at the time. I know, now, that I must have got
my first suspicion, at that moment, of a new light (and horrid light)
having suddenly fallen on the case, in the mind of Sergeant Cuff--purely
and entirely in consequence of what he had seen in Miss Rachel, and
heard from Miss Rachel, at that first interview between them.
"A young lady's tongue is a privileged member, sir," says the Sergeant
to Mr. Franklin. "Let us forget what has passed, and go straight on with
this business. Thanks to you, we know when the paint was dry. The next
thing to discover is when the paint was last seen without that smear.
YOU have got a head on your shoulders--and you understand what I mean."