Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone is the story of a sacred, cursed Indian diamond with an unfortunate predilection for getting itself stolen by Englishmen. It is stolen in both India and England: first from a temple, then from the bedroom of Rachel Verinder, on the very night she receives the jewel as a birthday present from her uncle. The police are summoned to investigate this second theft, and no sooner do they look into the matter than they find themselves at a loss. There seems no help for the situation until Rachel's uncle, the elder Mr Blake, sends aid from London in the form of "a grizzled, elderly man" with a face "as sharp as a hatchet" called Sergeant Cuff (Collins 106).

"When it comes to unraveling a mystery, there isn't the equal in England of Sergeant Cuff!" declares Rachel's cousin, the younger Mr Blake (Collins 106). Cuff's first appearance in the flesh, however, is not nearly so impressive as Blake's confidence in his reputation causes the Verinder household to expect. Gabriel Betteredge, the porter who greets Sergeant Cuff at the gates of Lady Verinder's estate, notes disapprovingly that "the first appearance of anything like interest" which the detective shows is roused, not by his investigation into the fate of the diamond, but by Lady Verinder's gardens. Sergeant Cuff holds a lengthy discourse with the estate's gardener on the question of whether grass or gravel walkways are preferable in a rosery. Betteredge grows increasingly vexed with the detective's apparent lack of interest in the case he has been called to investigate until Cuff remarks Lady Verinder's approach before Betteredge or the gardener notice it themselves—"though we knew which way to look, and he didn't." This incident inclines Betteredge to think the detective "rather a quicker man than he appeared to be at first sight" (Collins 108).

No Sherlock Holmes fan could read such a scene and fail to be reminded of a similar and (among Sherlockians, anyway) somewhat notorious interlude from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Naval Treaty." In this story, Holmes has been engaged to investigate the disappearance of an immensely important government document from a supposedly empty room. The loss of the document has caused Percy Phelps, the government clerk responsible for it, to suffer brain-fever; his health and career depend upon Holmes' finding the document intact.

Holmes listens intently to the details of the case and gives every sign of his willingness to be of service in the matter. However, just at the moment when Phelps and his fiancee are waiting for Holmes' opinion on the situation, Holmes rises from his chair, takes a flower from a nearby vase, and launches into a soliloquy on the beauty of the rose, postulating that the existence of needlessly beauty in the world must imply a divine benevolence at work in the universe (Doyle 167).

While some argue that the rose speech was merely a ploy by which Holmes was able to move across the room and examine the view from a nearby window, I believe that in this scene, as in many others, Doyle wishes to demonstrate that Holmes' eccentricity is the inescapable consequence of his brilliance. Similarly, Sergeant Cuff's expertise in two such opposite-seeming fields as the catching of thieves and the growing of roses implies to us, if not to Betteredge, the vast capacity of a brilliant mind. Our faith in his ability to catch the thief is reinforced, not lessened, by his ability to wax eloquent on the subject of grass walkways in rose gardens.

The modern detective story is generally held to have been invented by Edgar Allen Poe when he first introduced C. Auguste Dupin to the world in "Murders in the Rue Morgue." However, the person responsible for creating the first fictional English detective is Charles Dickens. Though his "Scotland Yarders" are notoriously stupid and rather dangerous in such books as Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, Inspector Bucket from Bleak House is an encouraging character to emerge from the writing of a man who was described as having had "a lifetime love affair with the Metropolitan Police" (Altick qtd. Jeffers 32). Still, Inspector Bucket is more competent and determined than brilliant or quirky, and Sergeant Cuff seems to owe more of his characterization to Dupin than to his English predecessor. For although Holmes himself decried Dupin's habit of "breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence" as "showy and superficial," (Doyle 163) such behavior has more in common with Cuff's passion for roses than does Inspector Bucket's tendency to "[stroll] about an infinity of streets: to outward appearances rather languishing for want of an object" (Dickens qtd. Jenner 33).

Although Bleak House introduced the first fictional English detective to the world, Collins' The Moonstone seems to have been the first book to equate English detective with English eccentric. The fictional detectives which precede Sergeant Cuff in the genre are at best like Inspector Bucket, "a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the follies of mankind" (Dickens qtd. Jenner 32). At worst they are like the detective who precedes Sergeant Cuff in his own novel, Inspector Seegrave; clumsy, officious, and narrow minded. Sergeant Cuff is the first of a long line of detectives who combine a quiet, imperious mastery of the trade with striking physical appearance, seemingly omniscient powers of observation and deduction, and a marked disdain for local police authority. Every great detective to follow Sergeant Cuff possesses these characteristics in some part, and the most famous example is of course Sherlock Holmes, who like Cuff possesses them all.

Such texts as Doyle's The Sign of Four, in which Sherlock Holmes is commissioned to recover a lost Indian treasure demonstrate that Doyle was certainly influenced by Collins. Since, as Hillary Waugh declares, every detective since Holmes has been patterned after Holmes, it seems fair to suggest that they may have also been patterned after Sergeant Cuff. Waugh describes all the detectives of the classical period as "men of giant intellect" who are somehow "separated from the crowd" (175). Every effort is made to characterize them as being as distinctive—as eccentric—as Holmes himself.

The mantle of eccentric was not in Victorian times lightly assumed. Rather than being merely amusing or harmless, the eccentric was a challenge to a society so rigidly stratified that government was considered to exist not merely to safeguard life and liberty but also to regulate "propriety, majority opinion, and the cheek of the young person" (Hark 112). The establishment of the Victorian detective as an inevitable eccentric seems to imply that the detective's mastery, though dedicated to upholding law and order, was a threat to the order of Victorian society. This is perhaps less surprising if it is considered that for the detective brilliance did not always mean eccentricity, but eccentricity seems always to have meant brilliance. A brilliant person is a powerful one, and while it is true that Sergeant Cuff and Sherlock Holmes usually reinforced the laws of the land, Holmes on more than one occasion takes the law into his own hands, and Sergeant Cuff seems quite capable of doing the same. The strength of character and the confidence which John Stuart Mill associated with eccentricity quite possibly represented to the Victorians the potential to dismiss societal strictures in favor of personal judgment—a potential which society undoubtedly found threatening (Saville 781). Indeed, on numerous occasions Sherlock Holmes was known to display perfect indifference to the blustering of wealthy, titled persons—from the nephew of a duke in "The Noble Bachelor" to the British Prime Minister in "The Adventure of the Second Stain." Likewise, although Sergeant Cuff is careful to give Lady Verinder her title and all the respect she is due, there is a quiet authority in his manner which seems to arise from his confidence that his skills are peerless. "I am the last and highest court of appeal in the realm of detection," declares Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, and though it is not Sergeant Cuff's way to be so vocal, it is easy to imagine that he might share the sentiment.

As the arrogance of this statement might begin to hint, the ex-centric role which Holmes and Cuff play in their society is not always mere coincidence or narrow-mindedness on the part of those around them. To Watson's frustration, Holmes frequently and intentionally alienates his clients when he begins to investigate their problems. His imperious manner, which he assumes whenever he is not speaking in private with Watson, causes them to despair less of his ability than of his willingness to help them. This is seldom remembered, however, when he presents them with the neatly wrapped solution to their mystery and so earns their eternal gratitude, as well as their indulgence for his infuriating behavior. A notable example of this tendency of Holmes' is the "rose speech," mentioned earlier, from "The Naval Treaty." In that scenario, Holmes seems to be blissfully unaware that he is, by turns, bewildering, angering, and embarrassing the three people who listen to his monologue; when his client's fiancee brings the fact to his attention his response is merely to smile. Other examples are to be found in "The Red-headed League," "The Second Stain," and "A Scandal in Bohemia"—in each of these stories, Holmes toys with his clients, either mocking them or feigning disinterest during their initial pleas for his help.

Sergeant Cuff, likewise, alienates every person he meets during his investigation at the Verinder estate: first the household staff, then the investigators who precede him on the scene, and eventually the Verinder family itself. This is hardly to be wondered at: his attitude is dismissive, his methods of investigation disrupt the natural order of life on the estate, and his very presence there indicates a failure on the part of the community to rule itself (Miller 200). Lady Verinder is uncomfortable in his presence, and Gabriel Betteredge finds himself wishing that Sergeant Cuff would choke on his dinner. Cuff does nothing to make his presence acceptable; it is possible he has investigated so many similar crimes in similarly cloistered manor house atmospheres that he knows the futility of achieving any reception warmer than reluctant tolerance. On those rare occasions when Cuff sheds his air of complete indifference, however, one wonders if he does not positively appreciate making those around him uncomfortable. He does not unduly vex any who have actually suffered in connection with the crime, but other persons who try his patience fare less kindly. Betteredge, observing Cuff's dry reception of Inspector Seegrave, remarks that Cuff appeared to be "on the watch for his brother officer's speedy appearance in the character of an Ass" (Collins 109).

It is not the dim amusement they gain by watching slower minds grind at petty problems which so impresses us with detectives of Cuff's and Holmes' standing. Perhaps the one quality which Sergeant Cuff and Sherlock Holmes and all the great master-detectives who have been shaped in their mold have in common, and which most characterizes their brilliance, is a respect for the value and significance of seemingly unimportant details. Sergeant Cuff first gives the Verinder estate a "taste of his quality," as Betteredge puts it, in response to Inspector Seegrave's assertion that the smudge of paint on the door of Rachel Verinder's sitting room cannot be relevant to the disappearance of the diamond, to which Cuff replies:

"I made a private inquiry last week, Mr Superintendent," he said. "At one end of the inquiry there was a murder, and at the other end there was a spot of ink on a tablecloth that nobody could account for. In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet" (Collins 109).

Similarly, Sherlock Holmes is famed for his attention to such "trifles." Sergeant Cuff's anecdote of an ink stain on the table cloth instantly puts the Sherlockian in mind of "The Six Napoleons" and an offhand comment which Holmes makes in that story: "You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth to which the parsley had sunk into the butter on a hot day" (Doyle 808). Possibly no other characteristic of the Victorian master-detective is more eccentric, and more essential, than this.

Julia Saville writes that by now "the association of eccentricity with Englishness [is] an age old commonplace" (781). It is probably safe to assume that even if Victorian society did feel threatened by the mastery of the great detectives such as Cuff and Holmes they were at the same time proud of them and would not be sorry, for example, that Sherlock Holmes is probably the most famous and instantly recognizable Englishman in the history of the island. At the very least they were secure enough in their trust of such individuals to be comforted by Doyle's final Holmes story, "His Last Bow," in which Holmes comes out of a retirement (keeping bees on the Sussex Downs, much as Sergeant Cuff retires to keep roses) to do a great service for England on the brink of World War I. Like King Arthur, he is supposed by the great Holmesians such as Vincent Starrett to be waiting when he is needed again, "in a romantic chamber of the heart; in a nostalgic country of the mind; where it is always 1895."