by Otto Penzler
“A woman’s shoe. They will be Miss Caston’s,” said Holmes. “She too, it seems, did as I do now.”
“Of course. But that was brave of her.”
“She is a forthright woman, Watson. And highly acute, I believe.”
Other than the scatter of woman’s steps, the letters themselves, nothing was to be seen.
“They might have dropped from the sky.”
Holmes stood up. “Despite her valour, it was a pity she walked about here. Some clue may have been defaced.” He looked out over the gardens, with their shrubs and small trees, towards the wider landscape. “Watson, your silent shivering disturbs me. Go back indoors.”
Affronted, I returned to the dining room, and found Miss Caston there, in a wine-red gown.
“They will serve dinner directly,” she said. “Does Mr. Holmes join us, or shall something be kept hot for him?”
“You must excuse Holmes, Miss Caston. The problem always comes first. He is a creature of the mind.”
“I know it, Doctor. Your excellent stories have described him exactly. He is the High Priest of logic and all pure, rational things. But also,” she added, smiling, “dangerous, partly unhuman, a leopard, with the brain almost of a god.”
I was taken aback. Yet, in the extreme colourfulness of what she had said, I did seem to make out Sherlock Holmes, both as I had portrayed him, and as I had seen him to be. A being unique.
However, at that moment Holmes returned into the room and Miss Caston moved away, casting at him only one sidelong glance.
The dinner was excellent, ably served by one of Miss Caston’s two maids, and less well by the footman, Vine, a surly boy of eighteen or so. Miss Caston had told us she had dispensed with all the servants but these, a gardener and the cook.
I noticed Holmes observed the maid and the boy carefully. When they had left the room, he expressed the wish to interview each of the servants in turn. Miss Caston assured him all, save the gardener, who it seemed had gone elsewhere for Christmas, should make themselves available. The lady then left us, graciously, to our cigars.
“She is a fine and a most attractive woman,” I said.
“Ah, Watson,” said Holmes. He shook his head, half smiling.
“At least grant her this, she has, from what she has said, known a life less than perfect, yet she has a breeding far beyond her former station. Her talk betrays intellect and many accomplishments. But she is also womanly. She deserves her good fortune. It suits her.”
“Perhaps. But our mysterious grudge-bearer does not agree with you.” Then he held up his hand for silence.
From a nearby room, the crystal notes of a piano had begun to issue. It seemed very much in keeping with the lady that she should play so modestly apart, yet so beautifully, and with such delicate expression. The piece seemed transcribed from the works of Purcell, or Handel, perhaps, at his most melancholy.
“Yes,” I said, “indeed, she plays delightfully.”
“Watson,” Holmes hissed at me. “Not the piano. Listen!”
Then I heard another sound, a dry sharp scratching, like claws. It came, I thought, from the far side of the large room, but then, startling me, it seemed to rise up into the air itself. After that there was a sort of soft quick rushing, like a fall of snow, but inside the house. We waited. All was quiet. Even the piano had fallen still.
“What can it have been, Holmes?”
He got up, and crossed to the fireplace. He began to walk about there, now and then tapping absently on the marble mantle, and the wall.
“The chimney?” I asked. “A bird, perhaps.”
“Well, it has stopped.”
I too went to the fireplace. On the hearth’s marble lintel, upheld by two pillars, was the escutcheon I had glimpsed at the gate.
“There it is, Holmes, on the shield. De Castone’s fox!”
3
To my mind, Holmes had seemed almost leisurely so far in his examination. He had not, for example, gone upstairs at once to view the study wall. Now however, he took his seat by the fire of the side parlour, and one by one, the remaining servants entered.
First came the cook, a Mrs. Castle. She was a large woman, neat and tidy, with a sad face which, I hazarded, had once been merry.
“Now, Mrs. Castle. We must thank you for your splendid dinner.”
“Oh, Mr. Holmes,” she said, “I am so glad that it was enjoyed. I seldom have a chance to cook for more than Miss Caston, who has only a little appetite.”
“Perhaps the former Miss Caston ate more heartily.”
“Indeed, sir, she did. She was a stout lady who took an interest in her food.”
“But I think you have other reasons to be uneasy.”
“I have seen it!”
“You refer—?”
“The white fox. Last week, before the snow fell, I saw it, shining like a ghost under the moon. I know the story of wicked old Sir Hugh. It was often told in these parts. I grew up in Chislehurst Village. The fox was said to be a legend, but my brother saw just such a white fox, when he was a boy.”
“Did he indeed.”
“Then there are those letters cut in the snow. And the number upstairs, and all of us asleep—a five, done in red, high upon the wall. The five days before Christmas, when the lady is in peril. A horrible thing, Mr. Holmes, if a woman may not live at her own property alone, but she must go in fear of her life.”
“After the death of your former employer, you take these signs seriously.”
“The first Miss Caston had never had a day’s indisposition until last Christmas. She always went away just before that time. But last year her carriage stood ready on the drive every day, and every day the poor old lady would want to go down, but she was much too ill. Her poor hands and feet were swollen, and she was so dizzy she could scarce stand. Then, she was struck down, just as she had always dreaded.”
“And the fox?” Holmes asked her.
The cook blinked. She said, “Yes, that was strange.”
“So you did not yourself see it, on that former tragic occasion?”
“No, sir. No one did.”
“But surely, Mrs. Castle, the present Miss Caston’s former maid, Lucy, saw the white fox in the fields at the time of the elder lady’s death?”
“Perhaps she did, sir. For it would have been about,” Mrs. Castle replied ominously.
“Well, I must not keep you any longer, Mrs. Castle.”
“No, sir. I need to see to my kitchen. Some cold cuts of meat have been stolen from the larder, just as happened before.”
“Cold meat, you say?”
“I think someone has been in. Someone other than should have been, sir. Twice I found the door to the yard unlocked.”
When she had left us, Holmes did not pause. He called in the footman, Vine. The boy appeared nervous and awkward as he had during dinner. From his mumblings, we learned that he had seen the white fox, yesterday, but no other alien thing.
“However, food has been stolen from the kitchen, has it not?”
“So cook says,” the boy answered sullenly.
“A gypsy, perhaps, or a vagrant.”
“I saw no one. And in the snow, they would leave their footprints.”
“Well done. Yes, one would think so.”
“I saw the letters dug out there,” blurted the boy, “and Miss Caston standing over them, with her hand to her mouth. Look here, she says to me, who has written this?”
“And who had?”
The boy stared hard at Holmes. “You are a famous gentleman, sir. And I am nothing. Do you suspect me?”
“Should I?”
Vine cried out, “I never did anything I should not have! Not I. I wish I never had stayed here. I should have left when Lucy did. Miss Caston was a hard mistress.”
I frowned, but Holmes said, amiably, “Lucy. She was obliged to care for her ailing mother, I believe.”
Vine looked flustered, but he said, “The mistress never mourned her aunt, the old woman. Mi
stress likes only her books and piano, and her thoughts. I asked her leave to go home for the Christmas afternoon. We live only a mile or so distant, at Crowby. I should have been back by nightfall. And she says to me, Oh no, Vine. I will have you here.”
“It was your place to be here,” I said, “at such a time. You were then the only man in the house.”
Holmes dismissed the boy.
I would have said more, but Holmes forestalled me. Instead we saw the maid, Reynolds, who had waited at dinner. She had nothing to tell us except that she had heard recent noises in the house, but took them for mice. She had been here in old Miss Caston’s time, and believed the old woman died of a bad heart, aggravated by superstitious fear. Reynolds undertook to inform Holmes of this without hesitation. She also presented me with a full, if untrained, medical diagnosis, adding, “As a doctor, you will follow me, I am sure, sir.”
Lastly Nettie Prince came in, the successor to Lucy, and now Miss Caston’s personal maid. She had been at the house only a few months.
Nettie was decorous and at ease, treating Holmes, I thought, to his surprise, as some kind of elevated policeman.
“Is your mistress fair to you?” Holmes asked her at once.
“Yes, sir. Perfectly fair.”
“You have no cause for complaint.”
“None, sir. In my last employment the mistress had a temper. But Miss Caston stays cool.”
“You are not fond of her, then?”
Nettie Prince raised her eyes. “I do not ask to love her, sir. Only to please her as best I can. She is appreciative of what I do, in her own way.”
“Do you believe the tales of a curse on the Caston women?”
“I have heard stranger things.”
“Have you.”
“Miss Caston is not afraid of it, sir. I think besides she would be the match for any man, thief, or murderer—even a ghost. Old Sir Hugh de Castone himself would have had to be wary of her.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She talks very little of her past, but she made her way in the world with only her wits. She will not suffer a fool. And she knows a great deal.”
“Yet she has sent for me.”
“Yes, sir.” Nettie Prince looked down. “She spoke of you, sir, and I understand you are a very important and clever gentleman.”
“And yet.”
Nettie said, “I am amazed, sir, at her, wanting you in. From all I know of Miss Caston, I would say she would sit up with a pistol or a dagger in her lap, and face anything out—alone!”
“Well, Watson,” said Holmes, when we were once more by ourselves in the parlour.
“That last girl, Nettie Prince, seems to have the right of it. An admirable woman, Miss Caston, brave as a lioness.”
“But also cold and selfish. Unsympathetic to and intolerant of her inferiors. Does anything else strike you?”
“An oddity in names, Holmes.”
Holmes glanced my way. “Pray enlighten me.”
“The letters in the snow, ENRV. And here we have a Nettie, a Reynolds and a Vine.”
“The E?”
“Perhaps for Eleanor Caston herself.”
“I see. And perhaps it strikes you too, Watson, the similarity between the names Castle and Caston? Or between Caston and Watson, each of which is almost an anagram of the other, with only the C and the W being different. Just as, for example, both your name and that of our own paragon, Mrs. Hudson, end in S.O.N.”
“Holmes!”
“No, Watson, my dear fellow, you are being too complex. Think.”
I thought, and shook my head.
“ENR,” said Holmes, “I believe to be an abbreviation of the one name, Eleanor, where the E begins, the N centres, and the R finishes.”
“But the V, Holmes.”
“Not a V, Watson, a Roman five. A warning of the five dangerous days, or that Miss Caston will be the fifth victim of the Gall. Just as the number five is written in her study, where I should now like to inspect it.”
Miss Caston had not gone to bed. This was not to be wondered at, yet she asked us nothing when she appeared in the upper corridor, where now the gas burned low.
“The room is here,” she said, and opened a door. “A moment, while I light a lamp.”
When she moved forward and struck the match, her elegant figure was outlined on the light. As she raised the lamp, a bright blue flash on the forefinger of her right hand showed a ring. It was a square cut gem, which I took at first for a pale sapphire.
“There, Mr. Holmes, Doctor. Do you see?”
The number was written in red, and quite large, above the height of a man, on the old plaster of the wall which, in most other areas, was hidden by shelves of books.
“Quite so.” Holmes went forward, looked about, and took hold of a librarian’s steps, kept no doubt so that Miss Caston could reach the higher book shelves. Standing up on the steps, Holmes craned close, and inspected the number. “Would you bring the lamp nearer. Thank you. Why, Miss Caston, what an exquisite ring.”
“Yes, it is. It was my aunt’s and too big for me, but in London today it was made to fit. A blue topaz. I am often fascinated, Mr. Holmes, by those things which are reckoned to be one thing, but are, in reality, another.”
“Where are you, Watson?” asked Holmes. I duly approached. “Look at this number.” I obeyed. The five was very carefully drawn, I thought, despite its size, yet in some places the edges had run, giving it a thorny, bloody look. Holmes said no more, however, and descended from the steps.
“Is it paint, Holmes?”
“Ink, I believe.”
Miss Caston assented. She pointed to a bottle standing on her desk, among the books and papers there. “My own ink. And the instrument too—this paper knife.”
“Yes. The stain is still on it. And here is another stain, on the blotting paper, where it was laid down.”
Holmes crossed the room, and pulled aside one of the velvet curtains. Outside the night had again given way to snow. Opening the window, he leaned forth into the fluttering darkness. “The ivy is torn somewhat on the wall.” He leaned out yet further. Snow fell past him, and dappled the floor. “But, curiously, not further down.” He now craned upwards and the lamplight caught his face, hard as ivory, the eyes gleaming. “It is possible the intruder came down from the roof rather than up from the garden below. The bough of a tree almost touches the leads just there. But it is very thin.”
“The man must be an acrobat,” I exclaimed.
Holmes drew back into the room. He said, “Or admirably bold.”
Miss Caston seemed pale. She stared at the window until the curtain was closed again. The room was very silent, so that the ticking of a clock on the mantle seemed loud.
Holmes spoke abruptly. “And now to bed. Tomorrow, Miss Caston, there will be much to do.”
Her face to me seemed suddenly desolate. As Holmes walked from the room, I said to her, “Rest as well as you can, Miss Caston. You are in the best of hands.”
“I know it, Doctor. Tomorrow, then.”
4
The next morning, directly after breakfast, Holmes dispatched me to investigate the hamlet of Crowby. I had not seen Miss Caston; it seemed she was a late riser. Holmes, abroad unusually early, meanwhile wished to look at the bedchamber of the deceased elder Miss Caston. He later reported this was ornate but ordinary, equipped with swagged curtains and a bell-rope by the fire.
As I set out, not, I admit, in the best of humours, I noted that the sinister letters and the Roman number five had been obliterated from the ground below the terrace by a night’s snow.
Elsewhere the heavy fall had settled, but not frozen, and in fact I had a pleasing and bracing walk. Among the beech coppices I spied pheasant, and on the holly, red berries gleamed.
Crowby was a sleepy spot, comprising two or three scattered clusters of houses, some quite fine, a lane or two, and an old ruin of a tower, where birds were nesting. There was neither a church nor an inn, the o
nly public facility being a stone trough for the convenience of horses.
Vine’s people lived in a small place nearby, but since Holmes had not suggested I look for it, or accost them, I went round the lanes and returned.
My spirits were quite high from the refreshing air, by the time I came back among the fields. Keeping to the footpath, I looked all about. It was a peaceful winter scene, with nothing abnormal or alarming in it.
When I came in sight of the house, I had the same impression. The building looked gracious, set in the white of the snow, the chimneys smoking splendidly.
Indoors, I found Vine, Reynolds and Nettie engaged in decorating the dining room with fresh-cut holly, while a tree stood ready to be dressed.
Holmes and Miss Caston were in the side parlour and I hesitated a moment before entering. A fire blazed on the parlour hearth, and a coffee pot steamed on the table. Holmes was speaking of a former case, affably and at some length. The lady sat wrapt, now and then asking a sensible question.
Seeing me, however, Holmes got up and led me in.
“I have been regaling Miss Caston with an old history of ours, Watson. It turns out she has never read your account of it, though nothing else seems to have escaped her.”
We passed an enjoyable couple of hours before luncheon. I thought I had seldom seen Holmes so unlike himself in company, so relaxed and amenable. Miss Caston cast a powerful spell, if even he was subject to it. But presently, when he and I were alone, he changed his face at once, like a mask.
“Watson, I believe this interesting house is no less than a rat-trap, and we are all the rats in it.”
“For God’s sake, Holmes, what do you mean?”
“A plot is afoot,” he said, “we must on no account show full knowledge of.”
“Then she is in great danger?” I asked.
He glanced at me and said, coldly, “Oh, yes, my dear Watson. I do believe she is. We are dealing with high villainy here. Be on guard. Be ready. For now, I can tell you nothing else. Except that I have looked at the elder Miss Caston’s papers myself, and made an obvious discovery.”
“Which is?”
“The warning or threatening letter which was sent my client had all its words cut from various correspondence kept here. I have traced every word, save one. No doubt I would find that if I persisted. They were part of bills and letters, one of which was written in the early seventeenth century. Our enemy effaced them without a care. One other incidental. The footman, Vine, resents the dismissal of his sweetheart, Lucy, who was Miss Caston’s former maid.”
