All Of Them Witches

All Of Them Witches is both the title of a book Edward Hutchins leaves for Rosemary Woodhouse and the phrase that gathers her suspicions into a pattern. Its worn pages point her toward Adrian Marcato, while its letters lead her to identify Roman Castevet as Marcato’s son. Later, as Rosemary tries to secure her baby’s safety, the title becomes the blunt conclusion that everyone around her is involved.

The book and its markings

The copy Rosemary opens is black and old, its gold lettering almost worn away. Hutch’s signature is on the flyleaf, with Torquay, 1934 beneath it; a small blue bookseller’s sticker remains inside the cover. As she turns the pages, she recognizes Hutch’s underlinings and marginal checkmarks from books he lent her earlier in their friendship. The volume is not simply a new source of information: it bears traces of his attention, including the places where he chose to mark the text.

The table of contents makes the title’s subject explicit. Its chapters cover figures presented as witches, including Gilles de Rais, Jane Wenham, Aleister Crowley, Thomas Weir, and Adrian Marcato; the final chapters are devoted to witch practices and witchcraft and Satanism. Rosemary finds an underlined passage about a substance called Devil’s Pepper, and later notices Hutch’s markings on claims concerning the persistence of belief, the power attributed to fresh blood, and the use of black candles. Those details connect the book’s general account of witchcraft to objects and ideas already troubling her: Minnie Castevet’s herbs and Tannis-root charm, and the black candles she brought during a power failure.

Marcato and the hidden identity

The chapter on Adrian Marcato gives Rosemary historical particulars. Marcato was born in Glasgow in 1846, brought to New York soon afterward, and died on Corfu in 1922. The book describes the tumult of 1896, when Marcato claimed to have summoned Satan and was attacked by a mob outside the Bramford. That account differs from what Hutch had previously told her: the attack happened outside, not in the lobby. The chapter also recounts similar events in Stockholm in 1898 and Paris in 1899. A formal portrait makes Marcato seem fleetingly familiar to Rosemary; a less formal photograph shows him with his wife, Hessia, and their son, Steven, whose name Hutch has underlined.

Rosemary wonders why Hutch wanted her to read the account after he had already warned her about the Bramford and later acknowledged that his suspicions might have been unjustified. His message that the title was an anagram turns the book from historical record into a puzzle. Using Scrabble tiles, Rosemary rearranges the letters of All Of Them Witches. Her first attempts produce phrases that do not resolve into a convincing message, and she dismisses the exercise as foolish. She considers whether J. R. Hanslet, the author’s name, might itself be a pen name, but the decisive clue is elsewhere: the underlined Steven in the photograph caption.

Taking the letters of Steven Marcato, Rosemary rearranges them into Roman Castevet, then back into Steven Marcato. The repeated fit is the revelation: Roman’s name is an anagram of the name of Marcato’s son. She tells Guy that Roman is Steven, explaining the connection to the man who claimed to have conjured Satan and was attacked by a mob outside the Bramford. When Guy asks who told her, Rosemary names Hutch and shows him the book. The title’s wordplay has moved her from an uneasy suspicion about the Castevets to a specific claim about Roman’s identity.

From clue to conviction

The title’s meaning remains entangled with uncertainty. The book supplies historical details and a name puzzle, but Rosemary also questions whether witches really exist and whether Hutch’s warnings can be trusted. Her reading moves between evidence—the marked passage, the photograph, the letters that make Roman’s name—and attempts to dismiss the pattern as the product of a delirious friend or an overactive imagination. The book thus gives her a way to test her suspicions, even as she continues to resist what they imply.

That tension sharpens when Rosemary looks for the volume again after Guy has put it in the garbage. He says he did not want her reading more of it and becoming upset. She objects that Hutch gave it to her and that it belongs to her. The book’s disappearance does not erase what she has learned; instead, it removes a physical object she might have reread and checked for herself. The contrast is pointed: Hutch’s marked copy makes knowledge available, while Guy’s decision takes that source out of her hands.

Later, alone in a phone booth as she seeks help from Dr. Hill, Rosemary repeats the title to herself as she thinks through who is involved: Guy, Dr. Sapirstein, Minnie, and Roman. She believes they mean to use her to produce a baby they can take, and vows to protect the child. At this point, All Of Them Witches is no longer only a book title or a coded clue. It is her compressed name for a conspiracy she believes has become clear, and the words accompany her shift toward relying on her own judgment rather than expecting others to rescue her.

Narrative function

The expression gathers two kinds of evidence into one memorable phrase. In the book, it first points toward a hidden identity through the name Steven Marcato; in Rosemary’s later thoughts, its plural claim widens to include the people she believes are acting together. Its movement from title, to puzzle, to accusation follows the change in her understanding: an inherited volume becomes a tool for interpretation, and its wording becomes a private formula for danger.

The phrase also links the Bramford’s history to the ordinary domestic spaces through which Rosemary moves. The apartment was already associated with Marcato’s story; the book places that history in her hands, and the anagram makes it relevant to the neighbor who lives beside her. Later, her belief that a secret passage connects the apartments gives her suspicion a physical counterpart in the building. The phrase does not itself prove every part of her interpretation, but it marks how the book’s historical clues and her present circumstances come to form one increasingly urgent pattern.