Following the Trail to Cobb's Hole — The Moonstone

Chapter 15 tracks Sergeant Cuff and Betteredge from the fir plantation to the Yolland cottage at Cobb's Hole, with the detective steadily tightening his grip on a theory he has already largely formed before the walk begins. In the opening quarter, Cuff drops his evasiveness and lays out his reasoning plainly. Rosanna Spearman is not the principal suspect but a tool of someone else, and that unnamed person's protection will shield her from prosecution regardless of what evidence surfaces. Betteredge presses for a name and gets none, but the exchange forces him to acknowledge, at least privately, that his loyalty to Rosanna may be misplaced. The detective then asks a seemingly random question about whether Rosanna recently received new linen, and the answer unlocks his entire reconstruction of her movements. In the middle quarter, Cuff explains the chain of events with clinical precision.

When Superintendent Seegrave pointed out the paint smear on the door to the assembled servants, Rosanna understood immediately that her own nightgown or petticoat bore a matching stain. She feigned illness, slipped into town, bought fabric, sewed a replacement garment alone in her room Thursday night, and lit a fire not to burn the stained original but to dry and iron the substitute. The stained garment stayed hidden on her body. Cuff notes that the recent gift of new linen from Lady Verinder destroyed his best chance of catching her through inventory, and the observation carries a genuine note of professional frustration rather than cruelty. The third quarter shifts to the beach itself, where the sand becomes Cuff's primary witness. He reads Rosanna's footprints with the same care a physician reads symptoms, identifying deliberate scuffing meant to obscure direction, a toe print aimed toward the water, and heel marks showing where she waded in to avoid leaving a traceable path.

The quicksand stirs at the turn of the tide while they watch, and the landscape's bleakness amplifies the sense that something irreversible is already in motion. Cuff concludes she was not destroying an object but hiding one, and that the hiding place lies somewhere in or near the water. In the closing quarter, the two men reach the Yolland cottage. The fisherman and his son are out; Limping Lucy, who shares a bond of mutual disability with Rosanna, rests upstairs; and Mrs. Yolland receives them alone. Cuff's interrogation technique here is a masterclass in indirection.

He opens with the Royal Family, Primitive Methodists, and fish prices, then circles toward Rosanna by positioning himself as her defender against the spite of her fellow servants. Within fifteen minutes Mrs. Yolland is convinced she is speaking to the girl's truest ally. The chapter closes with Cuff on the verge of learning what Rosanna purchased and why, having transformed a potentially hostile witness into a cooperative one through patience and calculated sympathy. The moral weight of the scene rests on how easily good intentions can be turned against the very person they mean to protect.