Hopefully, this will be of no inconvenience to you. Should it prove otherwise, I will return at some more favourable hour.

I looked up. "How unusual, Holmes. A client who fails to a.s.sume you are always in residence, awaiting them!"

"Indeed. I also was struck by that."

The letter continued:

I am divided in my mind whether or not to ask your opinion. The matter at hand seems strange and foreboding to me, but I am acutely conscious your time is often filled, and perhaps I am fanciful. Finally I have decided to set the facts before you, that you may be the judge. Please believe me, Mr. Holmes, if you can a.s.sure me I have no cause for fear, I shall depart at once with a light heart.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed.

Holmes stood by the window. "She sets great store by my opinion, it seems. She will allow me to decide her fate merely on hearsay."

"She? Ah yes, a lady." The signature read "Eleanor Caston." It was a strong, educated hand, and the paper of good quality.

"What do you make of it, Watson?" Holmes asked, as was his wont.

I told him my views on the paper, and added, "I think she is quite young, although not a girl."

"Ah, do you say so. And why?"

"The writing is formed, but there is none of the stiffness in it which tends to come with age. Nor does she seem querulous. She has all the courteous thought of someone used to getting her own way. Conversely, she knows of and trusts you. Wisdom, but with a bold spirit. A young woman."

"Watson, I stand in awe."

"I suppose," I added, not quite liking his tone, "an elderly lady will now enter the room."

"Probably not. Mrs. Hudson caught sight of her earlier. But do go on."

"I can think of nothing else. Except I have used this writing paper myself. It is good but hardly extravagant."

"Two other things are apparent," said Holmes, leaning to the letter. "She wears a ring slightly too large for her, on her right hand. It has slipped and caught in the ink, here and here, do you see? And she does not, as most of her s.e.x do, favour scent."

I sniffed the paper. "No, it seems not."

"For that reason, I think, Watson, you at first deduced the letter had been penned by a man. A faint floweriness is often present in these cases. Besides, her writing is well-formed but a trifle masculine."

Below, I heard the bell ring. "And here she is."

Presently Eleanor Caston was admitted to the room.

She was slim, and quite tall, her movements extremely graceful. She wore a tawny costume, trimmed with marten fur, and a hat of the same material. Her complexion was white and clear, and she had fine eyes of a dark grey. Her hair was decidedly the crowning glory, luxuriant, elegantly dressed, and of a colour not unlike polished mahogany. I was surprised to note, when she had taken off her gloves, that contrary to Holmes's statement, she wore no rings.

Although her appearance was quite captivating, she was not, I thought, a woman one would especially notice. But I had not been in her company more than five minutes, before I realized hers was a face that seemed constantly changeable. She would, in a few moments, pa.s.s from a certain prettiness to an ordinariness to vivid flashes of beauty. It was quite bewitching.

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes, Doctor Watson, for allowing me this interview today. Your time is a precious commodity."

Holmes had sat down facing her. "Time is precious to all of us, Miss Caston. You seem to have some fear for yours."

Until that moment she had not looked directly at him. Now she did so, and she paled. Lowering her eyes, she said, rather haltingly, "You must forgive me. This is, as you suspect, perhaps a matter of life or death to me."

Without taking his eyes from her, Holmes signalled to me. I rose at once and poured for her a gla.s.s of water. She thanked me, sipped it, and set it aside.

She said, "I have followed many of your cases, Mr. Holmes, in the literature of Doctor Watson."

"Literature-ah, yes," Holmes remarked.

"The curiosity of it is, therefore, that I seem almost to be acquainted with you. Which enables me to speak freely."

"Then by all means, Miss Caston, speak."

"Until this summer, I have lived an uneventful life. My work has been in the libraries of others, interesting enough, if not highly remunerative. Then I was suddenly informed I had come into a house and an amount of money which, to me, represents a fortune. The idea I need no longer labour for others, but might indulge in study, books and music on my own account, was a boon beyond price. You see, a very distant relative, a sort of aunt I had never known I had, died last Christmas, and left all her property to me, as her only relation. You will note, I am not in mourning. As I say, I did not know her, and I dislike hypocrisy. I soon removed to the large house near Chislehurst, with its grounds and view of fields and woodland. Perhaps you can envisage my happiness."

She paused. Holmes said, "And then?"

"Autumn came, and with it a change. The servants, who until then had been efficient and cheerful, altered. My maid, Lucy, left my service. She was in tears and said she had liked her position very well, but then gave some pretext of a sick mother."

"And how could you be sure it was a pretext, Miss Caston?"

"I could not, Mr. Holmes, and so I had to let her go. But it had been my understanding that she, as I, was without family or any close friends."

At this instant she raised her head fiercely, and her eyes burned, and I saw she was indeed a very beautiful woman, and conceivably a courageous one. Despite her self-possession, it was obvious to me that Holmes made her shy and uneasy. She turned more often to me in speech. This phenomenon was not quite uncommon, I must admit. She had admitted after all to reading my histories, and so might have some awareness of Holmes's opinion of women.

"Presently," she went on, "I had recourse to my aunt's papers. I should have explained, a box of them had been left for me, with instructions from my aunt to read them. That is, the instruction was not directed solely at me, but at any woman bearing the Caston name, and living alone in the house. Until then I had put the task off. I thought I should be bored."

"But you were not," said Holmes.

"At first I found only legal doc.u.ments. But then I came to these. I have them here." She produced and held out to him two sheets of paper. He read the first. Then, having got up and handed both papers to me, Holmes walked about the room. Reaching the window, he stayed to look out into the soft flurry of the falling snow and the darkness of impending night. "And she had died at Christmas?"

"Yes, Mr. Holmes, she had. So had they all."

The first paper was a letter from Miss Caston's aunt. It bore out my earlier amateur theory, for the writing was crotchety and crabbed. The aunt was a woman in her late sixties, it seemed, her hand tired by much writing.

To any female of the Caston family, living in this house a single life, unwed, or lacking the presence of a father or a brother: Be aware now that there is a curse put on the solitary spinsters of our line.

You may live well in this house at any time of year save the five days which forerun and culminate in Christmas Eve. If you would know more, you must read the following page, which I have copied from Derwent's Legends of Ancient Houses. Legends of Ancient Houses. You will find the very book in the library here. Take heed of it, and all will be well. It is a dogged curse, and easy to outwit, if inconvenient. Should you disregard my warning, at Christmas, you will die here. You will find the very book in the library here. Take heed of it, and all will be well. It is a dogged curse, and easy to outwit, if inconvenient. Should you disregard my warning, at Christmas, you will die here.

I turned to the second paper. Holmes all this while stood silent, his back to us both. The young woman kept silent too, her eyes fixed on him now as if she had pinned them there, with her hopes.

"Watson," said Holmes, "kindly read Derwent's commentary aloud to me."

I did so.

In the year 1407, the knight Hugh de Castone is said to have left his bane on the old manor-farm at Crowby, near Chislehurst.

A notorious woman-hater, Sir Hugh decreed that if any Castone woman lived on the property without husband, father or brother to command her obedience, she would die there a sudden death at Yuletide. It must be noted that this was the season at which de Castone's own wife and sister had conspired to poison him, failed, and been mercilessly hanged by his own hands. However, the curse is heard of no more until the late seventeenth century, when Mistress Hannah Castone, her husband three months dead, held a modest festival in the house. She accordingly died from choking on the bone of a fowl, on Christmas Eve. One curiosity which was noted at the time, and which caused perplexity, was that a white fox had been spotted in the neighbourhood, which after Mistress Castone's burial, vanished. A white fox it seems, had been the blazon of Sir Hugh de Castone, as depicted on his coat of arms.

I stopped here and glanced at Miss Caston. She had turned from us both and was gazing in the fire. She appeared calm as marble, but it occurred to me that might be a brave woman's mask for agitation.

"Watson, why have you stopped?" came from the window.

I went on.

Again the curse fell dormant. It may be that only married ladies thereafter dwelled at the farm, sisters with brothers or daughters with their fathers. However, in 1794, during the great and awful Revolution in France, a French descendant of the Castons took refuge in the house, a woman whose husband had been lost to the guillotine. Three nights before the eve of Christmas, charmed, as she said, by glimpsing a white fox running along the terrace, the lady stepped out, missed her footing on the icy stair, and falling, broke her neck. There has in this century been only one violent death of a Caston woman at the house in Crowby. Maria Caston, following the death of her father the previous year, set up her home there. But on the evening preceding Christmas Eve, she was shot and killed, supposedly by an unwanted lover, although the man was never apprehended. It is generally said that this curse, which is popularly called the Caston Gall, is abridged by midnight on Christmas Eve, since the holiness of Christmas Day itself defeats it.

I put down the paper, and Holmes sprang round from the window.

"Tell me, Miss Caston," he said, "are you very superst.i.tious?"

"No, Mr. Holmes. Not at all. I have never credited anything which could not be proved. Left to myself, I would say all this was nonsense."

"However?"

"The lady I call my aunt died on Christmas Eve, about eleven o'clock at night. She had had to break her own custom. Normally she would leave the house ten days before Christmas, staying with friends in London, and returning three days after St. Stevens. But this year she fell ill on the very day she was to leave. She was too unwell to travel, and remained so. I heard all this, you understand, from the servants, when once I had read the papers in the box, and questioned my staff firmly."

"How did she die?"

"She was asleep in her bed, and rallying, the doctor believed. The maid slipped out for a moment, and coming back found my aunt had risen as if much frightened, and was now lying by the fireplace. Her face was congested and full of horror. She was rigid, they told me, as a stone."

"The cause?"

"It was determined as a seizure of the heart."

"Could it not have been?"

"Of course her heart may have been the culprit."

Holmes glanced at me. His face was haughty and remote but his eyes had in them that dry mercurial glitter I connect with his interest.

"Mr. Holmes," said Eleanor Caston, standing up as if to confront him, "when I had questioned my servants, I put the story away with the papers. I engaged a new maid to replace Lucy. I went on with my improved life. But the months pa.s.sed, and late in November, Lucy wrote to me. It was she who found my aunt lying dead, and now the girl told me she herself had also that day seen a white fox in the fields. It would be, of course, an albino, and our local hunt, I know, would think it unsporting to destroy such a creature. No, no. You must not think for a moment any of this daunted me."

"What has?"

"Three days ago, another letter came."

"From your maid?"

"Possibly. I can hardly say."

On the table near the fire she now let fall a thin, pinkish paper. Holmes bent over it. He read aloud, slowly, "'Go you out and live, or stay to die.'" He added, "Watson, come and look at this."

The paper was cheap, of a type that might be found in a thousand stationers who catered to the poor. Upon it every word had been pasted. These words were not cut from a book or newspaper, however. Each seemed to have been taken from a specimen of handwriting, and no two were alike. I remarked on this.

"Yes, Watson. Even the paper on which each word is written is of a different sort. The inks are different. Even the implement used to cut them out, unless I am much mistaken, is different." He raised the letter, and held it close to his face, and next against the light of a lamp. "A scissors here, for example, and there a small knife. And see, this edge-a larger, blunter blade. And there, the trace of a water-mark. And this one is very old. Observe the grain, and how the ink has faded, a wonder it withstood the paste-Hallo, this word is oddly spelled."

I peered more closely and saw that what had been read as 'out' was in fact 'our.' "Some error," said Holmes, "or else they could not find the proper word and subst.i.tuted this. Miss Caston, I trust you have kept the envelope."

"Here it is."

"What a pity! The postmark is smudged and unreadable-from light snow or rain, perhaps."

"There had been sleet."

"But a cheap envelope, to coincide with the note-paper. The writing on the envelope is unfamiliar to you, or you would have drawn some conclusion from it. No doubt it is disguised. It looks malformed." He tossed the envelope down and rounded on her like an uncoiling snake.

"Mr. Holmes-I a.s.sure you, I was no more than mildly upset by this. People can be meddlesome and malicious."

"Do you think that you have enemies, Miss Caston?"

"None I could name. But then, I have been struck by fortune. It is sometimes possible to form a strong pa.s.sion concerning another, only by reading of them say, in a newspaper. I gained my good luck suddenly, and without any merit on my part. Someone may be envious of me, without ever having met me."

"I see your studies include the human mystery, Miss Caston."

Her colour rose. One was not always certain with Holmes, if he complimented or scorned. She said, rather low, "Other things have occurred since this letter."

"Please list them."

She had gained all his attention, and now she did not falter.

"After the sleet, there was snow in our part of the country, for some days. In this snow, letters were written, under the terrace yesterday. An E, an N and an R and a V. No footsteps showed near them. This morning, I found, on coming into my study, the number five written large, and in red, on the wall. I sleep in an adjoining room and had heard nothing. Conversely, the servants say the house is full of rustlings and scratchings."

"And the white fox? Shall I a.s.sume it has been seen?"

"Oh, not by me, Mr. Holmes. But by my cook, yes, and my footman, a sensible lad. He has seen it twice, I gather, in the last week. I do not say any of this must be uncanny. But it comes very near to me."

"Indeed it seems to."

"I might leave, but why should I? I have gone long years with little or nothing, without a decent home, and now I have things I value. It would appal me to live as did my aunt, in flight each Christmas, and at length dying in such distress. Meanwhile, the day after tomorrow will be Christmas Eve."

2.