Discussion Topic
Holmes' deductions and discoveries in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."
Summary:
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Sherlock Holmes deduces that Dr. Roylott used a poisonous snake to murder Julia Stoner and attempted to do the same to Helen. Holmes discovers key evidence, including a ventilator and dummy bell-rope, which indicated a snake was used to travel between rooms. The snake, trained to return to Roylott's room at a whistle, was kept in a safe and rewarded with milk. Holmes' investigation confirms this, solving the mystery and saving Helen.
What conclusion does Holmes draw in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and why?
Holmes does not reveal his conclusions until the end of the story. This is typical of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Watson observes Holmes in action and overhears most of what Holmes talks about with other characters, but Watson does not know what Holmes is thinking until Holmes is ready to tell him. Arthur Conan Doyle was very much influenced by the so-called tales of ratiocination of Edgar Allan Poe. Doyle observed that Poe typically explained his protagonist 's thinking after the event. This technique can be seen in "The Purloined Letter," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Gold Bug." Too much explanation at the beginning of a story or somewhere in the middle of the story can be boring. The reader wants to know what happened. Explanations tend to be monologues, and monologues tend to be tedious. Doyle's stories, such as "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," always...
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contain the element of adventure. Readers are interested in action and in meeting unusual characters. They are less interested in a detective's thought processes. Dr. Roylott in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" certainly is an unusual character.
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Holmes explains his conclusion to Watson after Dr. Roylott is dead and the case is all wrapped up.
"My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such a poison would take effect would also, from his point of view, be an advantage."
This is probably the first time the word "snake" is used in the story. The author used the words "speckled band" in the title and throughout the tale because the word "snake" would give the whole plot away. Julia refers to a "speckled band" when she is dying in Helen's arms. She probably actually saw the snake retreating up the bell-rope but was already delirious and talking incoherently.
Once Holmes concluded that Dr. Roylott was trying to kill Julia with the same poisonous snake he had used to kill her sister, it was just a matter of waiting in the dark in Helen's room for the snake to appear. Holmes assumed that Dr. Roylott would proceed immediately with his plan to kill Helen, even in spite of the fact that Roylott knew she had consulted a detective--or perhaps even because she had consulted a detective. Roylott may believe that he had better dispose of her quickly because she was getting suspicious and might either move out of the house or get someone to protect her. Time is of the essence because Helen is getting married very soon. She might, in fact, decide to get married without any delay so that she could move out of Stoke Moran and have a husband to protect her. So Holmes expected Roylott to use his snake that very night, even though it would have been prudent for Roylott to wait for at least a few nights until Helen got over her fright. Roylott probably did not expect Holmes to get involved with the case because Helen had no money to pay the detective's fee. But Watson explains in this story, as he does in other stories, that Holmes took cases on a pro bono basis if they interested him.
...working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.
In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," what does Holmes' discovered evidence suggest?
At the end of the story, after Helen Stoner has been saved from death and Dr. Grimesby Roylott has been killed by his own snake, Holmes tells Watson all about his deductions from the evidence found at Stoke Moran.
My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track.
So Holmes was expecting a snake when he and Watson were sitting in silence in the former bedroom of Julia Stoner which had recently been assigned to her sister Helen. What the two men do not realize is that the snake is actually there on the bed for several hours. Holmes doesn't see it until, at around three-thirty in the morning, he hears the low whistle his client Helen had told him about. That means Dr. Roylott is summoning it back up the bell-pull, through the ventilator, and into his adjoining room. Holmes strikes a match and lashes at the speckled band climbing back to the ventilator. Since Holmes had been sitting on the side of the bed, he must have been sitting very close to the coiled snake for several hours without knowing it.
Holmes sees other evidence when he examines the bedrooms earlier in the day. Dr. Roylott has a dog-leash with a noose fashioned at the end of it. He has a saucer containing some milk on top of a steel safe. Holmes deduces that Roylott has trained a snake to return through the ventilator at the sound of a low whistle by rewarding it with the milk and then locking it in the safe. Holmes examines the plain wooden chair in Roylott's room and sees evidence that he must have been standing on it in order to put his poisonous snake through the ventilator. No doubt he would also have been standing on that chair to recapture the snake when it returned, but when Holmes lashed it with his cane the snake returned before the doctor was prepared to slip the noose around it. That was how he came to be fatally bitten. When Holmes and Watson see him:
Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his head.
There is also evidence that Helen was moved into Julia's former bedroom in order to be in the bed under the ventilator and beside the dummy bell-pull.
"By the way, there does not seem to be any very pressing need for repairs at that end wall.”
“There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from my room.”
Arthur Conan Doyle titled his story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and never mentions the word "snake" until the very end. He did not want his readers to get the idea of a snake being used for murder because that would spoil the ending. Helen only uses the words "speckled band" when telling about Julia'a death, and even when Holmes and Watson see it wrapped around Dr. Roylott's head,
“The band! the speckled band!” whispered Holmes.
What does Holmes learn from breaking into the room in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?
Before going down to Stoke Moran, Holmes tells Watson briefly what he suspects, including the following:
"...Miss Helen Stoner heard a metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of those metal bars that secured the shutters falling back into its place."
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is an example of what is called a "locked-room murder mystery." The prototype for such stories was probably Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The essential part of the mystery is "How could the victim be murdered when he (or she) was inside a apparently impenetrable room with locked doors and shutters?" Holmes makes it clear that this is the main problem when he tells his friend Watson:
“Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls are sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable, then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her mysterious end.”
When the two men take the short train ride to Leatherhead and the cab out to Stoke Moran, the detective is especially interested in examining the shutters from the outside.
Holmes, after a careful examination through the open window, endeavoured in every way to force the shutter open, but without success. There was no slit through which a knife could be passed to raise the bar. Then with his lens he tested the hinges, but they were of solid iron, built firmly into the massive masonry. “Hum!” said he, scratching his chin in some perplexity, “my theory certainly presents some difficulties. No one could pass these shutters if they were bolted."
After inspecting the shutters, Holmes examines the room in which Helen Stoner is currently sleeping, which had been Julia Stoner's bedroom at the time of her death. Holmes next examines Dr. Roylott's adjoining bedroom. He sees a number of things in both rooms that lead him to form an entirely different theory. Most suggestive are the ventilator between the two rooms, the dummy bell-rope in Helen's room, the fact that her bed is bolted to the floor, and the steel safe and saucer of milk in Dr. Roylott's room. Holmes realizes that the words "the speckled band" have nothing to do with a band of gypsies, as he had originally assumed. At the end of the story, Holmes explains to his friend Watson:
"The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track."
The fact that the bedroom shutters were impregnable made Holmes think that the ventilator was the only entry into the locked bedroom and that only a snake could crawl through such a tiny opening. The steel safe in Dr. Roylott's bedroom, along with the saucer of milk and the leash with a loop at its end, all led Holmes to believe that Helen's stepfather had used a poisonous snake to kill Julia and was now trying to do the same thing to kill Helen. So Holmes solves two mysteries at the same time and saves his client from certain death.
Dr. Roylott has to be portrayed as a violent man who is only half-sane and who is strongly motivated to keep the money that would go to his step-daughters if they married. His is also a doctor who has spent a great deal of time in India and who collects exotic animals.