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