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The Moonstone

Wilkie Collins · novel, 1868·15 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
The 30‑second version15 hrs → 50 sec
  • A dying priest curses the diamond as it changes hands. In the 1799 storming of Seringapatam, John Herncastle stabs a temple guard for the yellow diamond. The dying man gasps, "The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!" before falling dead on the floor.
  • The diamond vanishes from a locked drawer overnight. Herncastle wills the diamond to his niece Rachel as a spiteful birthday present. She locks it in an Indian cabinet drawer; by morning the drawer stands empty and Rachel appears white-faced in her dressing gown, saying only, "The Diamond is gone!"
  • Sergeant Cuff builds his case on a paint smear. The London detective ignores the obvious suspects and fixates on a smear of wet paint on Rachel's bedroom door, reasoning that whoever touched it must have marked their nightgown, a clue everyone else dismisses as trivial.
  • A maid drowns herself rather than confess what she saw. House maid Rosanna Spearman, a reformed thief in love with the chief suspect, hides a letter explaining the true state of the paint-smeared nightgown, then walks into the Shivering Sand quicksand and drowns rather than confess in person.
  • A laudanum experiment reveals the sleepwalking thief. Doctor's assistant Ezra Jennings reconstructs the crime by dosing Franklin Blake with the same laudanum a rival slipped him as a prank the night of the theft, then watches him sleepwalk through the exact motions of lifting the diamond from the drawer with no memory of it.
  • The real thief turns out to be the philanthropist. Investigators find a trap-door cut into the ceiling above the inn room where Godfrey Ablewhite is found smothered, plus a scrap of Indian gold thread on the floor, proving the three Brahmin priests had tracked the diamond to the respectable philanthropist who had actually stolen it from Blake.
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: it is credited as the template for the modern detective novel, and Collins gets there through an unusual device, the mystery breaks open not from a sleuth's deduction alone but from literally re-drugging the suspect to force him to relive the crime.

A cursed yellow diamond disappears from a locked drawer on a country estate, and the detective solves it by drugging the prime suspect a second time to make him relive the crime.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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