He also can't say that he feels too bad about that.

That fatal night, Roylott goes to bed early, but he isn't sleeping yet: the smell of his heavy Indian tobacco is bothering Julia, whose bedroom is right next to his. Holmes tells Watson to bring his gun, and they enter Roylott's room. A number of details about the place are mysterious and disturbing. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room. Holmes attacks the snake, sending it back through an air ventilator connected to the next room. Helen lives with her stepfather, Grimesby Roylott, a doctor with a violent temper and a mysterious former life in the Indian colonies. Holmes says Miss Stoner's made the right choice, but she still hasn't told him everything: he reaches over and lifts a frill of lace covering Miss Stoner's wrist. Watson's all, "No worries!" Miss Stoner heads off.

This stepdad is the last living member of a great English family, the Roylotts. She has since gotten engaged to a guy named Percy Armitage. Julia tells her sister that, for the past few nights, always at around 3am, she has heard a low whistle that has awakened her. Once Holmes saw the ventilator, the bell-pull, and the nailed-down bed, he figured that the ventilator must be some kind of bridge for something to travel between the two rooms. Roylott doesn't object openly to the marriage, but exactly two weeks before the date of the wedding, Julia is killed.

Around his forehead is a weird yellow band with brown spots – a band that moves! They enter the room, and there's a lot going on that seems suggestive to Holmes: the room itself is pretty bare, but there's a beautiful bell-pull, newer than all the other things in the room, that was installed just a couple of years ago. And the rest is history!

For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. That night, Miss Stoner can't sleep. Roylott has heard of Holmes, and understands that Holmes likes to get involved in other people's affairs. Strange sounds and sights around the house arouse her suspicions and send her to 221B Baker Street. The scene of the crime is seemingly contained, offering no avenues of entrance or exit. Her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, had married Helen's mother in India and gained from her a substantial amount of money before her death, after which he moved with Helen and her twin sister Julia to his ancestral home and … Miss Stoner thinks Julia died of fright, and that "the speckled band" might have meant a group of people – the gypsies, with their spotted handkerchiefs? Roylott also keeps a cheetah and a baboon to roam the grounds.

But Julia never used it, nor did she ask for it to be put in. Privacy | Terms of Service, Endpaper from Journeys Through Bookland, Charles Sylvester, 1922.

Holmes chats with Watson about the case for a few moments, when suddenly the door swings open. She heads off to sleep. So Julia goes over to Miss Stoner's room, which is on the other side of Julia's room, to chat about her upcoming wedding. On her skin are five dark bruises, shaped like fingerprints. Having arranged for Helen to spend the night in her original bedroom, Holmes and Watson sneak into her bedroom without Dr. Roylott's knowledge. Dr. Roylott has required Helen to move into Julia's old room of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. He tells her to keep her door locked that night. Holmes grabs the dog whip from Roylott's body and uses the loop tied at the end as a noose to catch the snake and put it back in the safe. She is pale and drawn, and her hair has strands of premature grey.

The sensory imagery in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” supports the fact that Sherlock is very thorough in his observations.

Julia's windows were locked and barred, and there were no bruises or anything on her body.

It is, in fact, a snake, an Indian swamp adder (tragically, not a real snake). Join for Free (Speckled.

Julia's last words about a "speckled band" were in fact describing "a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India". Julia supposes so. They reach the house, and Holmes begins his investigation. He also checks out the seat of Roylott's chair and then spots a small dog whip hung on a corner of Roylott's bed, tied in a loop. Because of Roylott's hideous temper, Miss Stoner and Julia can't get any servants to stay at the house. Something else that's pretty odd: at the same time as the fake bell-pull was installed, a new ventilating duct was placed in the wall of the room. Helen Stoner begs Holmes for help with a strange situation that gives her cause to fear for her own life at her stepfather's house at Stoke Moran. She must go to bed early, pretending to have a headache, and then sneak quietly into her former bedroom (despite the repairs) for the evening. A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. After Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. |

All of this is evidence, Watson says, of some "subtle and horrible crime" (Speckled. Dr. Roylott bends an iron poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott keeps exotic pets from India. Half the house is totally falling down, but the right wing, where Miss Stoner and Roylott live, is in pretty good condition. Because Julia was bothered by the smell of her stepdad's cigar smoke the night she died. They wait, wide awake. They meet Miss Stoner as she's walking across a field towards the house. Watson can't see what it is that Holmes is hitting, though he. The Speckled Band Now we go back even further in time, says Watson, to a case that Holmes investigated while he and Watson were still bachelor-ing it up together at the 221B Baker Street apartment. Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies, whom Dr. Roylott permits to live on the grounds of the home;they wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks. Holmes seems to have figured it all out by looking at these clues, but Watson and Miss Stoner are still lost. By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from Shmoop and verify that you are over the age of 13. A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. The venomous snake had been sent to Julia's room by Dr. Roylott through the ventilator to murder her. Julia dies.

Holmes strikes a match and starts beating at the bell-pull with his cane. It would be totally impossible to get into Miss Stoner's current room from the outside if the shutters were closed and barred from the inside. He also thought the "speckled band" reference was probably to the Roma group living on Roylott's land. The lady's name is Helen Stoner, and she's living with her stepdad. So now she's sleeping in the room her sister Julia died in (creeeeeepy!). There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. But then – Roylott changes. So, he says, let's hear your story.

Therefore, the main suspicion falls on him. School Memberships, © 2020 OwlEyes.org, Inc. All Rights Reserved. A smell of burning oil and heated metal wafts in, and Watson realizes that someone in the next room has lit a dark-lantern, a lamp with a special sliding panel for blocking light. Holmes' investigation of the mother's estate reveals that its value has decreased significantly, and if both daughters had married, Dr. Roylott, Helen's ill-tempered and violent stepfather, would be left with very little, while the marriage of even one would be crippling. And indeed, in the sitting room is a lady of around thirty, dressed in black with a black veil, who's shaking with fear. Miss Stoner says no, that her sister was in her nightgown, and that she was carrying a burned-out match and matchbox in her hand. So Holmes is confused. A young woman named Helen Stoner contacts Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for aid in foiling the villainous plans of her stepfather, Grimesby Roylott. Miss Stoner thinks it must be the people camped out on their lawn. They lock the shutters behind them and turn off the light for fear that Roylott will see the light through the ventilator shaft. and then flounces off. 50). Julia starts to convulse, but is able to say, "Oh, my God! Before going on their afternoon journey to Stoke Moran, Holmes visits a public office to see the will of Miss Stoner's dead mother. So it can't be moved. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and this test of his theory turns out to be successful. It was the band! Holmes grimly notes that he is indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott's death, but that he is unlikely to feel much guilt over the death. As usual, Holmes’s superhuman ability to draw patterns from facts is a source of great narrative tension and delight. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. The safe, the milk, and the whipcord all pointed to the training and management of this dangerous animal. The cheetah's also probably around somewhere. After the swamp adder bit Julia, he called off the snake with the whistling, which made the snake climb up through the bell cord, disappearing from the scene. Watson has his pistol ready for action. Holmes asks if he and Watson can come up to the house at Stoke Moran that day, without her stepdad knowing.

One night, after conversing with her twin sister about her upcoming wedding day, Julia screamed and came to the hallway where Helen came out to see her, in Julia's dying words she said "it was the band, the speckled band!" After our narrator Dr. John Watson gets married (to Mary Morstan, in Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of Four) he doesn't see Holmes quite as often as he used to.As Watson sets up a happy home with his wife, Holmes remains as weird as ever, hanging around their old place in Baker Street … Browse Library, Teacher Memberships To get back to Miss Stoner's story, two years have passed since this terrible event. Summary. Finally, around 3am, they see a brief flash of light. The work, Miss Stoner says, contributed to Julia's death two years before. Roylott was pretty busy while he was in India: not only does he set up his own medical practice and beat his butler to death, but he also finds the time to marry Miss Stoner's mother, a young widow at the time. Now Helen is engaged to be married. Holmes and Watson creep quietly into Julia's former bedroom, through the window. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824). With the money his wife has left him, Roylott takes Miss Stoner and Julia away from London and to his old family home in Stoke Moran. Everyone in the neighborhood knows he's dangerous, but no one has been able to find any actual proof that he murdered his stepdaughter. Watson sets the stage: it's early April 1883, and Holmes wakes Watson at the ungodly hour of 7:15am to tell him that a young lady has come to Holmes with a case.

Holmes says that it's no problem. Julia had been engaged to be married and, had she lived, would have received an annual GBP250 annuity from her late mother's income. But her will does allow for some of that money to go to Miss Stoner and to Julia if/when the girls get married. So he's got a great motive for killing off his engaged stepdaughter(s).

Holmes and Watson get a nearby hotel room, from which they can see Roylott's house.

He demands to know what Miss Stoner has been telling Holmes. Now the swamp adder is sent again through the ventilator by Dr. Roylott to kill Julia's sister Helen.

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