Beryl Stapleton

Watson meets her on the moor path, and, taking him for Sir Henry, she urgently and fearfully begs him to go straight back to London and never set foot on the moor again. The moment her brother appears she covers her words with light talk of orchids, and later runs to cut Watson off and retract the warning as a foolish woman's whim.

At Merripit House Sir Henry is strongly drawn to her, and she to him. Something tropical and exotic about her contrasts with her cool, colourless brother, who watches the growing attachment with a look of strong disapproval.

She meets Sir Henry by appointment on the moor, yet when he speaks of love she will not answer it, pressing him again to leave this place of danger. Her brother breaks furiously upon the pair and orders her away.

Holmes reveals to Watson that the woman who passes as Stapleton's sister is in reality his wife, kept in the guise of a free woman because she is more useful so, and that it was she who sent the anonymous warning.

A York photograph endorsed Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, shown to Laura Lyons with written descriptions of the schoolmaster's wife, fixes her identity past doubt as Stapleton's wife and not his sister.

After the hound is shot down she is found in the house bound to a pillar, gagged and beaten, a red whip-weal across her neck. Her fidelity broken at last, she turns against her husband, names the island in the Grimpen Mire as his one refuge, and next morning leads the searchers to the path through the bog.

Holmes lays out her whole part: born Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, married to the man before ever he took the names Vandeleur and Stapleton. Held to him by love or terror or both, she consented to pass as his sister, but refused to lure Sir Charles or to be made an accessory to murder, and again and again tried to warn Sir Henry.