Behind the bolted door Caderousse demands a priest's promise that his name will never be used, because the men he is about to name are rich and powerful. The abbé swears confidentiality as an Italian priest fulfilling a dying wish. Caderousse then returns to La Réserve: Danglars wrote the Bonapartist denunciation with his left hand so the script would not be recognized, and Fernand posted it the day before the betrothal feast. Caderousse admits he was there, drunk enough to be fooled when they called it a harmless jest, and cowardly enough to stay silent when Edmond was arrested.
The confession widens to collateral damage. Old Dantès folded his wedding suit, paced all night, and refused to leave the house where Edmond might return. Morrel and Mercédès tried to help; Mercédès failed with Villefort. Caderousse watched the father sell his belongings, owe rent, and die after nine days without food while neighbors looked away. The abbé rises, drinks water with shaking hands, and hears Caderousse insist the cause was hunger, not illness.
The abbé asks who killed father and son. Fernand and Danglars, Caderousse answers, and their jealousy paid. Danglars became a baron and millionaire through banks and war speculation. Fernand deserted at Ligny, served in Greece and Albania, and returned as Count de Morcerf. Mercédès mourned eighteen months, then married Fernand in the church where she was to have wed Edmond. Villefort married and left Marseilles. When the abbé slips and shows he knows Caderousse witnessed the plot, the witness stammers but does not stop.
Caderousse also names the one honest man: Morrel interceded twenty times for Edmond, sheltered the father, left the red purse on the chimney, and is now nearly ruined after lost ships and failed houses, with a daughter whose marriage is blocked and a son in the army. The abbé gives Caderousse the entire diamond, saying Edmond had only one real friend, and takes Morrel's faded red silk purse from the cupboard in exchange. Caderousse swears on a crucifix that he has told the truth as the recording angel will; the priest rides away. Caderousse races to the Beaucaire fair to have the stone valued while La Carconte whispers that fifty thousand francs is a large sum but not a fortune, and may even be false.
Coming Up in Chapter 28
The day after Caderousse's confession, a man dressed as an English clerk from Thomson and French will visit the mayor of Marseilles and ask uncomfortable questions about Morrel and Son's debts and rumored ruin. The firm holds a hundred thousand francs on their securities.
