The stepfather appears. He is so violent and threatening that Holmes becomes more convinced that the lady is at risk. Holmes and Watson later go back to the house to examine the room and decide to stay overnight. In the middle of the night Holmes sees a speckled snake climb through a fake vent in the room and begin to descend towards the bed where she would have slept. Holmes drives the snake away and they rush in to the Dr Roylatts room to find him dead with the snake wrapped around his forehead - the speckled band. Everything is explained.
The short stories are told in different ways. 'Lamb to the Slaughter' is written in the third person. This means it is not told through the eyes of anyone. This gives an advantage to the reader because we can see everything that is happening in the story instead of just what one character can see. We know more than the characters because they don't know who the murder is or how the victim was killed. We are always one step ahead of the detectives. This also makes us want to read on which adds tension, because we want to find out what is going to happen, and whether she is going to get caught or not. It is also a disadvantage, because we know straight away who the murderer is, and we don't have the chance to try and solve the murder ourselves.
'The Speckled Band' is told through the eyes of Watson (one of the detectives). This is a disadvantage the reader because we can only see things that Dr Watson knows. This is a bigger disadvantage because although he is very clever he is not as good at seeing detail and seeing the things which can be worked out from the detail. This lets the reader compete with Homes at solving the puzzle. I suppose it is also an advantage because it adds tension and makes us guess how the victim was killed all the way through and makes you want to read on to see if you are correct. This story is not told chronologically. Watson is telling the story a long time after it actually happened when he is glancing over his notes.
'Lamb to the Slaughter' begins before the murder actually takes place. This is to show how cheerful Mary is, and adds emotion and it makes you feel sorry for Mary who has just found out that her husband is having an affair. It comes as a major shock to both the reader and her when she kills her husband.
'The Speckled Band' is told after the murder takes place. The reader gets to find out how both Julia and Dr Roylott were killed.
At the start of 'Lamb to the slaughter' Roald Dahl gives us a brief but good description of the setting, which is the living room of the Maloney's house. The room is 'warm and clean' it seems very 'tranquil' and calm. Mary is merrily sitting in her chair knitting away waiting for her husband to come home from work, 'punctually as always'.
'The speckled Band' is a completely different setting, because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes Stoke Moran. He gives us a very good detailed description. The building was 'Grey, lichen-blotched stone' It seams very deadly and a little bit grotty, two curving wings 'Like the claws of a crab' This makes you feel trapped, and threatened. Windows were broken. This shows the house was not very well maintained it was a 'Picture of ruin'. There is a link between the state of the house and the residents. In fact the lack of repair was part of the murderer's plan in forcing the two female residents into a room next to his own.
The Maloney's house is very orderly, organized and a very pleasant place to be, and everything seems to have its own place, which is a link to Mary who is very happy and pleasant. As for Stoke Moran it is 'a picture of ruin' not a nice place to be it seams very creepy and unwelcoming which is a link to Dr Roylott as he is very evil and not a very pleasant person. He doesn't seem to think about or care for anyone but himself.
The characters in both stories are different but also have things in common. Mary Maloney is 'six month with child. She is a good housewife, and seems to keep the house very neat and tidy. She loved her husband dearly 'she loved him for the way he sat loosely in his chair'. She turns out to be very clever and cunning "Hullo Sam" she said brightly in an un-suspicious manner as she walked in to the shop shortly after she had just killed her husband.
Dr Roylott is a very unusual character with strange habits. He is very violent and has a history of it. He once killed his butler. He lets gypsies stay in his gardens. He also has a passion for Indian animals and he has a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds.
Both Mary and Dr Roylott have a few things in common. For starters probably most obviously they are both murderers, although when Mary killed her husband it wasn't pre-meditated but she still murdered him. They are both very clever and find a way to cover up the murder and although they both kill someone neither of them feel sufficiently guilty, to own up to the murder. In 'Lamb to the slaughter' we are much closer to Mary. She seems innocent and very pleasant. In 'The Speckled Band', Dr Roylott only appears when he is very angry. We like Mary Maloney more and can admire her sense of humour in getting the detectives to eat the evidence. Dr Roylott seems entirely unpleasant. We cannot be fond of him or admire him. His cleverness is cruelty, and his cruelty is cunning. We are pleased that he dies a horrific death.
The victims are also different in 'Lamb to the Slaughter' we only really know that Mary is blameless but in 'The speckled Band' Dr Roylett seems a heartless and cruel man. It might not be right to kill him but his death does not seem a great loss.
In 'Lamb to the Slaughter', the detectives make several basic and unforgivable mistakes. They assume that the murder is a man 'get the weapon and you have got the man'. There is no evidence to say that the murderer is a man. They also drink whisky whilst on duty "its not strictly allowed, but I might just have a bit to keep me going" Then they eat the lamb which unknown to them is the murder weapon "Personally I think it is right here on the premises", "Probably right hear under our very noses". This is one of many times where irony is used and Roald Dahl is ridiculing the detectives. They are there only to show how clever she is. Her revenge on them is part of her revenge on her husband because they were all detectives.
In 'The Speckled Band' everything is really about how clever Holmes is. The details are used to make us feel more bewildered, so that at the end, when everything is explained, we feel great admiration for Holmes and Watson.
An important difference is that both stories are complicated but in very different ways. 'The Speckled band' is like a crossword puzzle, which we are not meant to solve. All the characters are simple. They are either good or evil, and there seems to be nothing in between. In 'Lamb to the Slaughter' the story itself is very simple, but because we change the way we see the people, and how we feel about them, the story is really more complicated than it seems. The victim starts as our friend, and becomes somebody we do not like. He is then treated harshly. So do we feel sympathy for him or not? It is not clear. We cannot be either entirely sympathetic, but we feel some sorrow. The murderer also starts as our friend. She seems very kind and loving. Then we feel a lot of sympathy for her because of what her husband tells her, but we are shocked that she is able to kill her husband. We think it is very much out of character. We then learn that she is also very cunning when she takes control. The way she treats the detective's seems to show contempt, which is not explained by what her husband had done. She enjoys making fools of them. Do we sympathise with her? Can we still believe that the crime was just a sudden outburst, or is her character actually much darker.
In 'Lamb to the Slaughter' the story works because everything seems so ordinary and every day. She doesn't use anything special to kill and she uses the simplest way of destroying the evidence. In 'The Speckled Band' the emotions are all very high; people scream, cry and shout. The murder weapon is an exotic snake and the method used involved months of preparation and planning.
In the years between Roald Dahl and Conan Doyle things have changed. Our sense of what is just and fair, is now more complicated and we know that we live in a world where we do not know how things should end. We can accept endings, which might be unfair. In 'The Speckled Band' the story ends with a simple ending but one, which I think is fair. Dr Roylatt's murder weapon in fact kills himself. Although the two stories seem very different it is odd that both stories use irony to make their final point. In the Speckled Band it is ironic that the murderer is killed by his own murder weapon and in 'Lamb to the Slaughter' it is ironic that the detectives eat the evidence. Perhaps irony is a very English thing. What brings the stories together is the way they use irony. How might an American or French person have told the same story?
It seems odd that two stories both aimed at different age groups. Roald Dahl's audience is normally children, and Conan Doyle wrote for adults. One story ends with a clean and reassuring justice, 'The Speckled Band', the other ends with complications.