The brooch in the curtain

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

Ruth's travelling box had been brought down before breakfast. It stood in the hall beside her, strapped and labelled, while Mr Bell explained that no servant could remain in his house after being suspected of theft. If his sister's brooch were returned immediately, he said, the matter might end with Ruth's quiet departure. The other servants watched from the stairs. Ruth kept her eyes upon the box.

Eleanor had been silent because everybody older than herself appeared certain. Then she remembered the charades performed after dinner. During one scene, her cousin Frederick had fastened the brooch to the drawing-room curtain and called it a star. The company had laughed, and Eleanor had assumed that someone later removed it. She described the scene now. Her aunt replied that Eleanor had always possessed an inconvenient imagination, while Mr Bell warned her not to confuse loyalty with evidence.

Eleanor crossed the hall and opened the drawing-room doors. Morning light showed every crease in the heavy red curtains. She climbed on a chair and ran her hands along the folds until a pin scratched her finger. The brooch hung behind the fabric, hidden where Frederick had pushed it through. When she carried it into the hall, nobody asked Ruth to open her box. Mr Bell merely told the footman to take it upstairs again.

Eleanor said that returning the box did not return Ruth's good name. This time, it was Ruth who looked up. She asked for a written account of where the brooch had been found. Mr Bell objected that such a statement would make a private mistake appear serious. Eleanor fetched paper from the library and wrote the facts herself. After a long pause, the housekeeper added her signature.

Ruth left that afternoon despite being invited to remain. She carried the signed account inside her glove. At dinner, Frederick complained that the curtain had been taken down, and Mr Bell answered that it had required mending. Eleanor noticed that Ruth's place below stairs remained empty. The household had recovered the brooch, but it could not arrange the morning as neatly as the drawing room.

“The passage successfully shows that Eleanor's decision to speak out changes more than the search for the brooch.”

Evaluate how successfully the writer presents this idea. Support your judgement with detailed references to the passage.