"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" | |||
---|---|---|---|
Short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | |||
Text available at Wikisource | |||
Country | United Kingdom | ||
Language | English | ||
Genre(s) | Detective fiction short stories | ||
Publication | |||
Published in | The Strand Magazine | ||
Published in English | February 1892 | ||
Chronology | |||
Series | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | ||
|
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eighth story of twelve in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was originally published in Strand Magazine in February 1892.
"The Speckled Band" is a classic locked-room mystery that deals with the themes of parental greed, inheritance and freedom. Tinged with Gothic elements, it is considered by many to be one of Doyle's finest works, with the author himself calling it his best story. [1] The story, alongside the rest of the Sherlock Holmes canon, has become a defining part of detective fiction. It has been adapted for television, film, theatre, radio and a video game. It is part of the exhibit at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. The theatrical adaptation was written and produced by Doyle himself, directed by and starring Lyn Harding as Grimesby Roylott. The role of Holmes was played by H. A. Saintsbury. Doyle famously clashed with Harding over several details of the script, but later reconciled with him after the universal success of the play. [2]
In April 1883, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson rise early one morning to meet a young woman named Helen Stoner, who fears that her stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, is threatening her life. She explains that Roylott is a violent doctor of great physical strength who practised in Calcutta, India; is the impoverished sole survivor of a wealthy but ill-tempered and amoral aristocratic Anglo-Saxon family in Surrey; and was married to Helen's late mother, a wealthy widow, 30 years prior. After serving time in an Indian prison for killing his Indian butler in a rage, Roylott had moved to England to reestablish his practice, but retired after his wife was killed in a railway accident eight years prior.
Furthermore, Helen's twin sister Julia died two years prior, shortly before her wedding day. Despite hearing her last words, "The speckled band!", Helen cannot make sense of them. Now that she is engaged, she has also begun hearing strange noises and observing strange activities around her heavily mortgaged countryside home of Stoke Moran, which Roylott has made extensive modifications to even before Julia's death. Of particular note, he is having an outside wall repaired, forcing Helen to move into the room where Julia died.
After Holmes agrees to take the case, he is visited by Roylott, who threatens to harm him if he interferes. Undaunted, Holmes leaves for the courthouse to examine Helen's mother's will before joining Watson in traveling to Stoke Moran, where he scrutinizes the premises. Within Helen's room, he discovers her bed is anchored to the floor, an unconnected bell cord has been installed, and a ventilator hole connects her room to Roylott's. Holmes and Watson arrange to stay the night in Helen's room.
At three a.m., a slight metallic noise and a dim light through the ventilator prompts Holmes to light a candle. He soon sees the "speckled band", a venomous snake, on the bell cord and strikes at it with his riding crop. Agitated, it flees back through the ventilator and kills Roylott, who had sent it to kill Helen and was awaiting its return. Holmes identifies the snake as an Indian swamp adder and reveals to Watson the will initially provided an annual income of £1,100 before dropping to £750 sterling when she died, of which her daughters could claim one-third upon marriage. Desiring all of the income for himself, Roylott schemed to murder his daughters. Though Holmes also admits to indirectly killing Roylott, he does not foresee it troubling him and chooses not to tell the police Roylott's full motive to spare Helen any further grief.
Richard Lancelyn Green, the editor of the 2000 Oxford paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named "Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure" in Cassell's Saturday Journal, published in February 1891. [1] In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa to stay in a tumbledown cabin that belonged to a Portuguese trader. On the first night in the cabin, he is awoken by a creaking sound, and sees "a dark queer-looking thing hanging down through the ventilator above it". It turns out to be the largest Boa constrictor he has seen (more likely a python because there are no boas in Africa). He is paralysed with fear as the serpent comes down into the room. Unable to cry out for help, the captain spots an old bell that hung from a projecting beam above one of the windows. The bell cord had rotted away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm.
"It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten."
The key characteristics to be considered in identification of the snake are:
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in February 1892, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in March 1892. [4] The story was published with nine illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. [5] It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, [5] which was published in October 1892. [6]
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" | |||
---|---|---|---|
Short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | |||
Text available at Wikisource | |||
Country | United Kingdom | ||
Language | English | ||
Genre(s) | Detective fiction short stories | ||
Publication | |||
Published in | The Strand Magazine | ||
Published in English | February 1892 | ||
Chronology | |||
Series | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | ||
|
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eighth story of twelve in the collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was originally published in Strand Magazine in February 1892.
"The Speckled Band" is a classic locked-room mystery that deals with the themes of parental greed, inheritance and freedom. Tinged with Gothic elements, it is considered by many to be one of Doyle's finest works, with the author himself calling it his best story. [1] The story, alongside the rest of the Sherlock Holmes canon, has become a defining part of detective fiction. It has been adapted for television, film, theatre, radio and a video game. It is part of the exhibit at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. The theatrical adaptation was written and produced by Doyle himself, directed by and starring Lyn Harding as Grimesby Roylott. The role of Holmes was played by H. A. Saintsbury. Doyle famously clashed with Harding over several details of the script, but later reconciled with him after the universal success of the play. [2]
In April 1883, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson rise early one morning to meet a young woman named Helen Stoner, who fears that her stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, is threatening her life. She explains that Roylott is a violent doctor of great physical strength who practised in Calcutta, India; is the impoverished sole survivor of a wealthy but ill-tempered and amoral aristocratic Anglo-Saxon family in Surrey; and was married to Helen's late mother, a wealthy widow, 30 years prior. After serving time in an Indian prison for killing his Indian butler in a rage, Roylott had moved to England to reestablish his practice, but retired after his wife was killed in a railway accident eight years prior.
Furthermore, Helen's twin sister Julia died two years prior, shortly before her wedding day. Despite hearing her last words, "The speckled band!", Helen cannot make sense of them. Now that she is engaged, she has also begun hearing strange noises and observing strange activities around her heavily mortgaged countryside home of Stoke Moran, which Roylott has made extensive modifications to even before Julia's death. Of particular note, he is having an outside wall repaired, forcing Helen to move into the room where Julia died.
After Holmes agrees to take the case, he is visited by Roylott, who threatens to harm him if he interferes. Undaunted, Holmes leaves for the courthouse to examine Helen's mother's will before joining Watson in traveling to Stoke Moran, where he scrutinizes the premises. Within Helen's room, he discovers her bed is anchored to the floor, an unconnected bell cord has been installed, and a ventilator hole connects her room to Roylott's. Holmes and Watson arrange to stay the night in Helen's room.
At three a.m., a slight metallic noise and a dim light through the ventilator prompts Holmes to light a candle. He soon sees the "speckled band", a venomous snake, on the bell cord and strikes at it with his riding crop. Agitated, it flees back through the ventilator and kills Roylott, who had sent it to kill Helen and was awaiting its return. Holmes identifies the snake as an Indian swamp adder and reveals to Watson the will initially provided an annual income of £1,100 before dropping to £750 sterling when she died, of which her daughters could claim one-third upon marriage. Desiring all of the income for himself, Roylott schemed to murder his daughters. Though Holmes also admits to indirectly killing Roylott, he does not foresee it troubling him and chooses not to tell the police Roylott's full motive to spare Helen any further grief.
Richard Lancelyn Green, the editor of the 2000 Oxford paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named "Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure" in Cassell's Saturday Journal, published in February 1891. [1] In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa to stay in a tumbledown cabin that belonged to a Portuguese trader. On the first night in the cabin, he is awoken by a creaking sound, and sees "a dark queer-looking thing hanging down through the ventilator above it". It turns out to be the largest Boa constrictor he has seen (more likely a python because there are no boas in Africa). He is paralysed with fear as the serpent comes down into the room. Unable to cry out for help, the captain spots an old bell that hung from a projecting beam above one of the windows. The bell cord had rotted away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm.
"It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten."
The key characteristics to be considered in identification of the snake are:
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" was first published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in February 1892, and in the United States in the US edition of the Strand in March 1892. [4] The story was published with nine illustrations by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine. [5] It was included in the short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, [5] which was published in October 1892. [6]