Just sit down and tell us your story," said Holmes kindly. "My name is Helen Stoner," she began, and I live with my stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, near a village in the country. His family was once very rich, but they had no money when my stepfather was born. So he studied to be a doctor, and went out to India. He met and married my mother there, when my sister Julia and I were very young. Our father was dead, you see. "Your mother had some money, perhaps?" asked Sherlock Holmes.