More tension is created when Mr Maloney “drains his glass in one swallow” This happens suddenly and has an effect on the reader by making the reader wanting to read on and find out what is going to happen. Mrs Maloney waits on her husband hand and foot but is there another reason? She could be doing this because she knows something is wrong and she wants to keep him talking. Mrs Maloney could be covering that she knows something is going to happen and she is keeping him busy purposely to put it all off.
Mr Maloney’s answers to his wife’s questions are mono-syllabic. There are one word answers which are short and stern. “Sit down” and “no” are examples. She is perturbed by his behaviour picking up on his every move and sound. “She heard the ice cubes falling back”. Mrs Maloney moves “uneasily in her chair”. She is getting eaten up inside and trying to put off the moment when Mr Maloney reveals what he has been trying to say. Mrs Maloney can sense that something is wrong and tries to force her husband to do things so his mind is on something else. She is desperate by saying “you must”. Mr Maloney tells her to “sit down” and she “began to get frightened”. Mr Maloney tells her something which we don’t know what it is. We are left to speculate about what it could be. It is clever story writing by Dahl, it keeps us anxious and wanting to read on. It is done to intrigue the reader. This is all done with one line “and he told her”. It is implicated that he is going to leave her for another woman as he says he’ll “give her money” and see she’s looked after.
Mrs Maloney is in a state of shock and disbelief. It tells us that Mrs Maloney “couldn’t feel her feet touch the floor” and from here the story takes a bizarre twist. Mrs Maloney goes down to the cellar and pulls out of the freezer the first thing she gets her hands on which was a leg of lamb. It was all automatic and she walks back up the stairs, holds the bone with her hands. She sees her husband on the other side of the living room with his back to her facing the window. She stopped and Mr Maloney says “for God’s sake” on hearing her but not turning around to face her “Don’t make supper for me, I’m going out”. With that Mrs Maloney walks up behind him she brought the frozen leg of lamb high into the air and brought it down on the back of his head as hard as she could. This was done without pause and it says “she might as well of hit him with a steel club”. It was completely unpremeditated; it was not planned but was fuelled by the shock that Mr Maloney put on her. It was a crime of passion like something you read about in newspapers. It is a shock to the reader because of the way Roald Dahl describes her in the beginning. It completely goes against the description of her character. The murder weapon is very original and darkly comical with signs of black humour. We don’t know what the motive was, maybe she was thinking of she can’t have him then no-one can.
At this point the reader feels slight sympathy for Mrs Maloney for what has happened to her but doesn’t agree with what she has done. The title at this becomes clear to the reader “Lamb to the Slaughter”. The lamb has been slaughtered for the meat and then used to slaughter someone else.
This story is an unusual idea; a policeman is the victim and not the vulnerable Mrs Maloney who we would expect to be the one who was murdered.
In the last bit of the story we begin to see Mrs Maloney’s character develop. She accepts the fact that there is going to be a penalty but her biggest concern is for her unborn child not what the consequences are going to be “She knew quite well what the penalty would be”. “That was fine”, “On the other hand what about the child”. Mrs Maloney being the wife of a detective knows what will happen to he but is not prepared for that to happen.
Mrs Maloney then begins to work out an alibi. She went into the kitchen and put the meat into the oven; she then washes her hands and ran upstairs. “She sat down before the mirror, tidied her face, touched up her lips and face”. She tried to smile but it came out peculiar. She started to talk to herself in the mirror but that sounded peculiar as well. “Hullo Sam”, she rehearsed this several times until the voice and the smile were coming out better. She went down stairs and out of the back door and into the street to Sam the Grocer’s. “Hullo Sam” she said brightly and while getting her potatoes, peas and cheesecake Mrs Maloney deliberately makes the point of saying to Sam that her husband is “tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight”. Mrs Maloney is very clever and almost believes her story herself. When she returns home and sees her husband on the floor she puts on a dramatic scene to convince herself its real. Her love for Patrick quickly changes to the unborn.
She then rings the police and two of Patrick’s friends from the force arrive. They go through the motions and none of them believe that Mrs Maloney murdered her dear husband. They then check the alibi and talk about what the murder weapon could be, the police asked her if they had anything missing from the house like a very big spanner or a heavy metal vase. Mrs Maloney replied “They didn’t have any heavy metal vases”, or a big spanner”.
Mrs Maloney then has a drop of whiskey and asked the police if they would eat the meat for her so it wouldn’t be wasted. The police were happy to accept and the murder weapon would never be found. At the end the police are talking about “it must have been a hell of a big club the guy must’ve used to hit poor Patrick”. The doctor said that Mr Maloney’s skull was smashed to pieces like from a sledge hammer. Then one of them says personally they think its right there on the premises “probably right under their noses”. Mrs Maloney is in the other room and she begins to giggle to herself. It could be because she thinks she’s won and got away with it or it could be that she’s going mad.
The second story I am comparing is “The Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which is a pre twentieth century story. This was written for the Times Newspaper and was a serialisation of the story, a little bit printed in the newspaper each day so the reader would buy the newspaper to find out what happened next. You can see natural breaks in the story where it stopped until the next day.
“The Speckled Band” is a typical murder mystery because is has everything you would expect it to have. In this story there is a poor victim, a very clever detective, the detective’s side-kick, a horrible villain and red herrings. This story was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle using his profession at University as a base for the Sherlock Holmes character. Julia and Helen Stoner were the step daughters of their murderer Dr Grimsby Roylott. Julia and Helen were sisters who had a very good life until their stepfather decided to be greedy. They were very close and when Julia died it affected Helen badly. She was very upset because her sister was to marry before she died, as was Helen when she visited Holmes. Helen is very clever and has a good memory as she remembered that her sister had noticed whistling noises outside.
This is not really a mystery because we can guess who did it from quite early on but now how he did it. There is tension straight away with news that Julia Stoner was dead. We suspect Grimsby Roylott straight away from his description. The name “Grimsby” reminds me of slime and sludge so straight away we are not supposed to like him. He is an evil man who has a short temper which is uncontrollable. He is a strong man and a bully. “He stepped swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands”. It shows Roylott’s strength when it says “he beat his native butler to death” and “he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream”. Normally a blacksmith would be one of the strongest men in the village but he was no match for the immense strength of Dr Roylott. I think he is mentally disturbed because he has been to prison and in court on a number of occasions and doesn’t seem to learn his lesson. It says “violence of temper approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family, and in my step father’s case it has, I believe intensified by his long residence in the tropics”. This shows that not all of Dr Roylott’s violence is his own fault but the fault of the men of his family in the past.
There is a deliberate description of Dr Roylott. Doyle describes him as “a bird of prey” with his “deep set bile shot eyes” and the “high thin fleshless nose” which resembles a beak and the resemblance to a bird. His face was large and “seared with a thousand wrinkles” and “marked with every evil passion”. Doyle deliberately describes the visit Holmes to enforce the idea that we are not supposed to like him.
There is a definite motive in this story which is so Dr Roylott won’t have to pay money to his stepdaughters as laid down in his wife’s will. In “The Speckled Band” we are straight into the story but in “Lambs to the Slaughter” the story unfolds as we go along. Watson is very cleverly used to bring us into the case so that everything being described to us because Watson knows as much as the reader. It is a mellow dramatic story with no humour which is very different to “Lamb to the Slaughter”, which contains lots of dark humour which Roald Dahl is famous for.
We suspect Roylott straight away and even more when we learn he has killed before. But we would never have suspected the thought to be innocent Mrs Maloney. Also on his visit to Holmes he uses alliteration to warn Holmes “to fall foul of”. It is deliberate to emphasise the fact of how bad a person he is. We also begin to feel for Helen’s danger when we find out that Julia is dead. Grimsby Roylott’s character is of a typical villain which is evil.
Doyle doesn’t hide Dr Roylott’s guilt, the bruises on Helen and our sympathy is aroused. We know that Helen has been frightened or sad for a long time because of the fact that “her figure and face were those of a young woman of thirty but her hair was shot with premature grey”. We also know she hasn’t been sleeping a lot because “her face all drawn and grey with restless, frightened eyes”, and she has been abused. “Five livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the right wrist”. Her sister died, she lives in a house with a horrible man, she must be unhappy. “Lamb to the Slaughter” is completely different, a happy loving couple awaiting a baby and then one of them turns out to be a murderer.
The Dr had his crime cleverly disguised with the use of red herrings, the gypsies and the exotic animals. The reader is intrigued to find out why Helen Stoner goes to see Sherlock Holmes two years after her sister died and we want to know the meaning of “The Speckled Band”.
The building was of grey lichen blotched stone with a high central portion and two curving wings like the claws of a crab. The roof was partly caved in. The centre portion was in little better repair, but the right hand block was comparatively modern and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys shows that this was where the family resided. There was scaffolding erected against the end wall but no signs of any workmen. The bedroom in which Julia Stone had died and now where Helen sleeps is very intriguing to the reader. Holmes “endeavoured in every way to force the shutter open, but without success”. There wasn’t even a slit in the shutters for a knife to fit through so when the door was locked and the shutters were shut there was no way that anyone could get into the room from the outside.
Also there is a bell rope hanging down and lies on the bed of Miss Stoner. But when Holmes pulled it he found it wasn’t “even attached to a wire”. There is a ventilator not on the outside wall where you would expect it to be, but on the wall adjoining to Dr Roylott’s room. Both of these changes, the dummy bell rope and the ventilator, were carried out at the same time. Something else that intrigues the reader is the fact that the bed was “clamped to the floor” which is very strange and means the bed is in the same position to the ventilator and the bell rope at all times. We worry for Miss Stoner as Holmes investigates as a matter of urgency and we expect her death is imminent.
The setting of the house at Stoke Moran is typical of a murder mystery as opposed to the homely atmosphere of Dahl’s story. Dahl’s reader is unsuspecting of what is to happen due to his deep description but you don’t feel this way reading “The Speckled Band”.
It’s hard to believe that Dr Roylott wasn’t at home when Holmes carried out his search. You would have thought that after following his stepdaughter to Holmes’ office that he would check up on her at home, it pushes coincidence too far “The Speckled Band” is crafted with precision and absolute detail and like a “fly on the wall documentary”. “The Speckled Band” is long and drawn out but very entertaining, funny and brilliantly researched. It is very cleverly written with everything explained at the end of the story using Watson.
I didn’t find it credible to believe he could keep a snake in a safe and for it to live off milk and that the snake could have been charmed. Nobody knew that he had had the snake sent to him which is a bit far fetched.
The stories are of two very different murders; personally I prefer “Lambs to the Slaughter”. It is unpremeditated; a spur of the moment and the wife didn’t get caught. “The Speckled Band” is planned and the Dr got caught. In “The Speckled Band” everything is explained at the end but in “Lamb to the Slaughter” we don’t know what happened to Mrs Maloney. We are left to speculate and this is a more satisfactory ending I believe. It leaves the reader thinking of what will eventually happen to Mrs Maloney and whether she does get caught or her scheme isn’t found out.
Daryll Brenton 10G1/DS Page