The Moonstone Ending Explained: Who Really Stole the Diamond?

Spoiler warning: This article reveals the solution and final scene of Wilkie Collins’s novel.

Godfrey Ablewhite is the thief in The Moonstone. Franklin Blake takes the diamond from Rachel Verinder’s drawer while under the influence of laudanum, then hands it to Godfrey for safekeeping. Godfrey keeps it and pawns it to cover a payment he owes from a trust he has emptied.

Rachel really did see Franklin take the diamond. What she missed was the handoff that turned his attempt to protect it into Godfrey’s chance to profit from it. And by the final page, the diamond is back in India, where its guardians have a very different idea of what it means to recover stolen property.

Why Franklin Blake took the diamond

On Rachel’s eighteenth birthday, the diamond she inherits from her uncle, John Herncastle, ends up in a cabinet drawer in her sitting room. Franklin is worried about the stone’s safety. When he goes to bed, he has no idea that Godfrey has put laudanum, an opium tincture, into his brandy and water at Dr. Candy’s instigation. Candy means to play a practical joke after Franklin mocks his profession.

Under the drug’s influence, Franklin goes to Rachel’s sitting room and takes the diamond. He still has the same worry that occupied him before bed. The drawer offers little protection, and he thinks the jewel would be safer at the bank. When he gets back to his room, he hands it to Godfrey and asks him to take it there. By morning, Franklin remembers none of it.

Why Rachel stays silent after seeing Franklin

Rachel sees Franklin open the drawer and leave with the stone. She believes he took it deliberately, and she loves him enough to shield him from exposure. She even hopes he’ll put the diamond back in secret. From Franklin’s point of view, her sudden hostility makes no sense. From hers, his willingness to help investigate looks like an astonishing piece of nerve.

Rosanna Spearman independently finds another clue. Franklin’s nightgown has a smear from the freshly painted sitting-room door. Rosanna hides it at the Shivering Sand to protect him. When Franklin later retrieves it, he finds his own name marked on the garment. The evidence puts him in Rachel’s room, and he still has to explain why he went there.

What Ezra Jennings’s experiment proves

Ezra Jennings, Dr. Candy’s assistant, pieces together fragments of what Candy said while ill. He realizes that Franklin may have acted under the influence of opium and sets up a re-creation of the night. This time, Franklin knows he’s taking laudanum, and Jennings places a substitute diamond in the drawer.

Rachel watches Franklin repeat the movements she saw on her birthday. This time, he drops the imitation stone and falls asleep before he can carry it back to his room. The experiment shows Rachel how Franklin could have taken the diamond without knowingly stealing it. The trail beyond the sitting room still depends on what Sergeant Cuff can learn about Godfrey.

There’s an early clue to Godfrey’s involvement in the birthday-night account. Gabriel Betteredge remembers Godfrey encouraging Franklin to accept the nightcap and takes it as a sign of friendliness between two rivals for Rachel’s affection. On a reread, that small kindness explains how Godfrey got his chance. Our guide explores how Collins uses this gap between what a witness sees and what they make of it. Why The Moonstone Has So Many Narrators

Why Godfrey Ablewhite kept the diamond

Godfrey has already spent the £20,000 he was meant to safeguard as a trustee. A £300 installment is due within days of Rachel’s birthday, and he has no money to pay it. According to the account he gives the moneylender Septimus Luker, he follows Franklin to the sitting room and sees Rachel watching. When Franklin hands him the diamond back in his bedroom, Godfrey waits to see what happens in the morning.

Franklin’s memory is blank and Rachel keeps quiet. Godfrey realizes he can keep the stone without either of them accusing him. He pledges it to Luker for a £2,000 loan and uses the first £300 to make the payment. A year later, he redeems the pledge in disguise. His plan is to have the diamond cut into smaller stones in Amsterdam so he can sell them and replace the missing money.

The distinction Collins draws comes down to what each man intends to do with the same object. Franklin asks Godfrey to put it somewhere safe. Godfrey sees a way to keep his fraud hidden. Luker’s account gives Cuff the missing link between those decisions.

Who kills Godfrey, and where does the diamond end up?

Godfrey is found smothered in a London lodging, with the diamond’s box open and empty. The evidence points to the Indian men pursuing the Moonstone, although Cuff’s report leaves the exact roles in the killing unresolved. The epilogue confirms what happens to the stone. The traveler Mr. Murthwaite sees it restored to the forehead of the moon god’s image at a shrine near Somnauth, in India.

Rachel and Franklin marry, and for Betteredge that’s the event that closes the family story. The novel gives the last word to Murthwaite’s account of the diamond. By then, the reader has seen the stone as a birthday gift, a means of covering a debt, and a sacred object whose guardians have pursued it across continents.

That final image sends you back to the prologue. Herncastle took the stone during the British storming of Seringapatam. When it disappears from Rachel’s drawer, the English household treats that morning as the beginning of the crime. The shrine scene restores the history the birthday party had turned into an inheritance. By the time the diamond reaches Rachel, it has already been taken from people who have spent generations trying to get it back.

For another classic mystery that changes on rereading, see our explanation of the ending of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Where to read The Moonstone

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Find The Moonstone on Amazon in the Penguin Classics paperback edited by Sandra Kemp.

Read the complete novel free. Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone at Project Gutenberg

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook