Introduction

Indian Diamonds 151
will therefore consider the aspect of romance as a necessary substitute for the
failure of the detective to effect order.
The Failure of Order and Detection
In detective fiction the ending imposes order on a chaotic and unintelligible world
(Siddiqi 244). It involves the reconstruction of significant past events which make
sense of the present:
Eigen schließlich ist zum dritten jenes entscheidenste Kriterium, das den Detektivroman
von allen anderen Erzählformen trennt, so eben sein Unerzähltes und dessen Rekonstruktion
[…] das Herausfinden eines bereits Geschehenen ante rem. (Bloch 334, italics
in the original)
The aim of detection, in all of the stories, is the recovery of the diamonds. In The
Sign of Four and “The Rajah’s Diamond”, which share a similar ending, the finding
of the diamonds and their sinking is accompanied by the discovery of their history
in India and the crimes which had been committed long before. Thomas Vandeleur’s
services to the Rajah of Kashgar had only been rumours, but Prince Florizel
can offer their details in a coherent narrative together with the diamond. He
presents the diamond to the startled detective together with the account of its
appropriation by Thomas Vandeleur in India and its passage to Paris (Stevenson,
“Rajah’s” 130-131). His position of near omniscience has aptly been prefigured in
the impression he had made on Simon Rolles: “[T]he man who seemed, like a god,
to know all things and to have suffered nothing” (96) can oversee both Indian and
metropolitan crime.
In The Sign of Four, Jonathan Small who has been arrested as the thief narrates
the theft of the treasure in India in his confession. His revelations thus not only
include the solving of the immediate crime in England, but the discovery of the
crimes’ pre-history. Sergeant Cuff, however, ignores the Moonstone’s Indian prehistory
and, one could argue, fails in his task (Free 342). Keep and Randall suggest,
with reference to The Sign of Four, that “[n]arrative thus substitutes itself for
the unrecuperated aspect of the case” (218), which also holds true for “The Rajah’s
Diamond”. In both instances, however, the momentous recovery of the
treasures is followed by their loss in the rivers Thames and Seine respectively.
The Moonstone is also lost to its English owners. It is not sunk but returns to
India as the three Brahmins manage to outwit the police. The restitution of the
diamond to its place in a statue in Somnauth undoes not only the British plundering
of Seringapatam, but also the earlier conquest of Somnauth by the Moguls,
800 years ago, so that the time arc of the story reaches back before the beginning
of the prologue. The English, however, do not have a hand in this restitution. Yet,
the narrative as substitute for a failed recovery does play a role. Murthwaite’s surveillance
of the scene and his reporting back of the discovery constitutes such a