illustration of Sherlock Holmes in profile looking across a cityscape with a magnifying glass in the distance and a speckled band visible through the glass

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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Resolution of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"

Summary:

In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," Sherlock Holmes resolves the mystery of Julia Stoner's death by discovering that her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, used a trained swamp adder, referred to as the "speckled band," to kill her. Roylott intended to murder Helen, Julia's sister, in the same way to retain their inheritance. Holmes foils the plot by forcing the snake back through the ventilator, where it fatally bites Roylott, making him the final victim. Helen is saved, and Holmes highlights the theme of justice, noting that violence often backfires on the perpetrator.

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What happens at the end of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?

After examining Helen Stoner's bedroom, Sherlock Holmes has concluded that Dr. Roylott is sending a snake through their communicating ventilator. He tells Watson later:

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. 

Holmes asks Helen to place a light in her window when her stepfather has gone to bed for the night. He...

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and Watson climb through her window and sit there in the dark in complete silence from about eleven p.m. until about three-thirty the next morning. Watson can tell the time from the church bell which rings in the distance every quarter-hour. After letting the two men inside, Helen had gone to sleep in her old bedroom. At about three o'clock Watson saw a brief gleam of light through the holes of the ventilator.

Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. 

Then about a half-hour later Watson heard something which he describes as

...a very gentle, soothing sound, like that of a small jet of steam escaping continually from a kettle.

When Holmes hears that sound he instantly strikes a match and lashes at the bell-pull with his cane. He drives the angry snake back up the bell-pull and through the ventilator, where it bites Dr. Roylott, who was not prepared to have his poisonous snake return so quickly at the sound of his whistle. He lets out a terrible scream. When Holmes and Watson enter his room they find him dead, with the snake, "the speckled band," wrapped around his head. Holmes expresses the moral of the story when he remarks:

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. 

That resolves "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." Helen Stoner wishes to keep the matter a secret to protect the Roylott family name. The coroner's inquest concludes that Dr. Roylott was accidentally bitten by his swamp adder, which was part of a collection of exotic Indian animals he was studying.

Sherlock Holmes has not only solved the "locked-room mystery" of Julia Stoner's death two years earlier, but he has undoubtedly saved the life of her sister Helen. Not only that, but Helen will be happily married and will inherit the estate of Stoke Moran and all of the assets left by her deceased mother. Holmes had previously determined that the invested capital produced an annual income of approximately 750 pounds. It was this income which Dr. Roylott was trying to keep for himself by killing Julia when she became engaged and then by attempting to kill Helen when she became engaged two years later. According to the terms of her mother's will, Dr. Roylott would have been legally obligated to pay Julia one-third of that annual income if she had lived, and he would have been under the same legal obligation to pay Helen about 250 pounds a year unless he succeeded in murdering her. Roylott was deeply in debt. Stoke Moran was heavily mortgaged. He simply could not afford to pay either stepdaughter such large annual installments.

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What is the resolution of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?

The resolution is the part of the story that ties up the loose ends. In this case, it is when Sherlock explains to Dr. Watson how he solved the mystery. Sherlock Holmes had made the logical deduction that there must be a ventilator between Dr. Roylett's room and Julia's room because the sister had remarked that she could smell his cigar smoke.  The house was undergoing renovation and the ventilator was made during this time.  The bed was fastened to the floor so the person couldn't move it, and a cord was hung next to the bed. It was clearly not meant as a bell pull because nothing happened when it was pulled.  Sherlock felt that something had to crawl down that bell pull.  He knew the doctor had been getting creatures from India, and Sherlock figured that the doctor would be able to kill with a poison that was unknown in this fashion given his Eastern training. The creature was a swamp adder, a very poisonous snake.  The whistle was the doctor's way of recalling the snake. He had trained it using the milk that was in his room. When the snake would return, he would then place the loop over the snake's neck and return it to the safe until the next night.  Each night he would put the snake through the ventilator, knowing that it would crawl down the cord and land on the bed.  Sooner or later it would bite the inhabitant of the bed.  The metallic clang that Miss Stoner had heard was the doctor closing the safe.  When Sherlock and Dr. Watson were in the room, Sherlock heard the snake hiss and attacked it with his cane. This action forced the snake back through the ventilator. It was angry and bit the first person it saw, which happened to be the doctor.  The doctor died ten seconds later.  Sherlock and Dr. Holmes found the snake curled around the doctor's head like a "speckled band". Sherlock Holmes is not sorry that he indirectly caused the death of Dr. Roylett.

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What is the conclusion of the mystery in The Adventure of the Speckled Band?

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Speckled Band, his most famous character- Sherlock Holmes- saves the life of a young woman. Helen Stoner lives with her stepfather in the country, in a great house where her sister died some years previous. Miss Stoner fears for her life, as the circumstances which preceded her sister's death seem to be repeating themselves. Before her demise, her sister was newly engaged, like Helen is now. Helen has also been hearing strange noises at night, just as her sister spoke of the night she died. In the middle of the night, Helen was so terrified by the sounds that she fled her home and came to London to seek the help of Mr. Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr. John Watson, agree to travel to Miss Stoner's home to investigate the unfurling mystery and try to save her life. Her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, is an eccentric man who keeps a variety of exotic animals as pets. At night, he lets a baboon run wild on the estate. Included among his exotic pets is a kind of snake called a swamp adder. 

Mr. Holmes discovers that Dr. Roylott has trained his pet swamp adder to come to him at the sound of a whistle. Late at night, he has been putting the snake into Helen's bedroom by means of a grate in the wall, where it is supposed to bite Helen! Dr. Roylott used this very same method to murder Helen's sister by snakebite, as he was afraid that if she married, he would lose the fortune left to her by her dead mother. Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson decide to stay in Helen's bedroom for the night, and when Dr. Roylott releases the snake, Holmes whacks it with his cane, sending it back through the grate. The snake is angry at having been attacked, and bites Dr. Roylott, who perishes from the venom. Helen survives the incident with both her life and fortune in tact.

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What are the key details in the ending of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?

Throughout the story the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has been trying to keep the reader from guessing that the so-called "speckled band" is really a poisonous snake. If Doyle had mentioned the word "snake" earlier than at the very end, the reader would have guessed that Dr. Roylott was sending a snake through the ventilator to bite Helen and that he had done the same thing to her sister Julia two years ago. The term "speckled band" comes from Julia's dying words. She must know she had seen a snake retreating back up the bell-pull after biting her, but she is both hysterical and delirious. When Holmes asks Helen what she thinks her sister meant, she tells him:

“Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of delirium, sometimes that it may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have suggested the strange adjective which she used.”

The reader does not even understand it is a snake that Holmes is whipping with his cane. This is because Watson, the narrator, doesn't see the snake until they go next door into Roylott's room.

“You see it, Watson?” he yelled. “You see it?”

But I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I heard a low, clear whistle, but the sudden glare flashing into my weary eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which my friend lashed so savagely.

Then finally the reader understands along with Watson.

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....Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.

“The band! the speckled band!” whispered Holmes.

The main point in this story is that Dr. Roylott used a poisonous snake to kill Julia Stoner in order to prevent her from marrying the man to whom she was engaged. Now he is trying to do the same thing to his other stepdaughter Helen because she has just recently become engaged and intends to marry within a couple of months. Roylott is desperate. He is deeply in debt and cannot afford to part with any portion of the capital he inherited from his stepdaughters' mother. Under the terms of her will, as Holmes ascertains before he and Watson come down to Stoke Moran, Roylott would keep the assets but would have to pay one-third of the income to Helen, just as he would have been forced to pay one-third to Julia if he hadn't killed her. 

Holmes resolves both cases in less than twenty-four hours. Helen Stoner comes to Baker Street shortly after seven o'clock in the morning. The mad doctor Roylott tries to send his snake through the ventilator at about three-thirty the next morning in the hope that it will kill Helen and solve his problem. He doesn't realize that Holmes and Watson are waiting in her bedroom in the dark. He isn't prepared to have his snake return so quickly, but it retreats as fast as it can as it can climb the bell-rope and slither through the ventilator-hole because Holmes is whipping it. It is so angered that it bites its owner before he has a chance to control it with the leather leash. Thus Holmes saves his client's life and solves the two-year-old mystery of her sister Julia's death--all within one day.

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Who is the final victim in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"?

When his step-daughter Julia becomes engaged to be married, Dr. Grimesby Roylott realizes that he will lose a portion of the wealth he inherited from his wife; thus, he plots to kill her with the most poisonous Indian snake—the swamp adder. He trains the snake with a whistle to travel through a ventilation shaft from his room to Julia's room and to come down a rope which is directly connected to Julia's bed; he doesn't train the snake to bite Julia, but he knows that once Julia turns in her sleep, the snake will bite her, and he's right—Julia is bitten by the snake and dies.

Julia's sister, Helen, who, after a couple of years, also becomes engaged, remembers the mysterious death of her sister and the weird whistle she heard and decides to seek help from the famed detective Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes solves the murder and catches Dr. Roylott "in the act" as he attempts to kill Helen the same way he killed Julia so that he can keep the inheritance. Holmes acts quickly and hits the snake, sending it back into the ventilator and back into Dr. Roylott's room. A cry is soon heard, and Holmes and Watson realize that the snake has bitten Dr. Roylott and that he is thus responsible for his own death. Therefore, Dr. Roylott becomes the final victim in the story.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
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