Violet Hunter visits Sherlock Holmes for advice on whether she should accept a unique governess job with a substantial initial salary of £100 a year, on the condition that she cut her hair short, among other strange provisos.

Despite her suspicions, Miss Hunter ultimately agrees, and leaves for Hampshire to work at Rucastle's countryside estate, the Copper Beeches.

Suspecting she was not supposed to see something outside, she used a small mirror shard hidden in her handkerchief to confirm and witnessed a man standing by the nearby road looking at the house.

Furthermore, Carlo, a deliberately-starved and vicious Mastiff that only the drunken manservant Mr Toller could control, was let loose every night to prowl the grounds.

His overacting aroused Miss Hunter's suspicions, confirmed when he suddenly threatened to feed her to Carlo if she entered the wing again.

Later, Toller's wife confirms Holmes' theory, and reveals when Alice came of age, she was to receive an annuity from her late mother's will.

Rucastle tried to force her to sign control of the inheritance over to him, resulting in Alice falling ill with brain fever and having her hair cut off.

Afterward, Alice marries her fiancé; Rucastle survives as an invalid being cared for by his second wife; and Miss Hunter becomes the principal of an all-girls' school in Walsall, which meets with "considerable success".

Instead of beginning with Ms Hunter's visit to Baker Street to tell her story, it starts with Rucastle trying to force his daughter to sign away her rights to her fortune, and then ordering her fiancé off his property.

[10] Other dramatisations of the story aired on 7 May 1943 (again with Rathbone and Bruce) and in November 1947 (with John Stanley as Holmes and Alfred Shirley as Watson).

[15] In Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, Violet Hunter becomes the second wife of Dr. Watson mentioned in "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier".