‘The Landlady’ introduces Billy Weaver a boy just starting work in Bath. Then introduces the landlady a forty-five to fifty year old woman who appears to Billy to be slightly dotty but harmless and may yet be as the story is open ended, but this woman does not seem to be the type of person to be a murderer, and it is only by the clues you can guess that murder is going on. ‘The Speckled band introduce Dr Watson assistant to Mr Holmes, Mr Holmes himself, the client Helen Stoner who turns out to be sister to a murdered woman. And later introduces Dr Grimesby Roylott a big intimidating violent man who is also step father to Helen and her deceased sister Julia. Dr Roylott seems to be the type to be a murderer though it is still hard to believe that someone would murder someone else.
‘The Landlady’ is set in the city of Bath in a dilapidated area of houses that looked to be once very swanky. ‘The Speckled Band’ is similar but on a larger scale it takes place in an old country manor that is falling into disrepair that is the home of Helen Stoner & Dr Roylott.
‘The Landlady’ gives clues but almost in a discrete manner but leaves only one answer if the clues are followed. The clues aren’t really clues for example one of the “clues” is that the landlady stuffs her ‘little pets’. The landlady also keeps looking at Billy as though she was appraising him. When Billy went to sign the guest book he noticed only two previous names one was Christopher Mullholland And Gregory Temple, but these entries where two and three years old. The landlady also kept talking about these two in the past tense and comparing Billy to them. The last clue was the tea which the landlady had offered to Billy Weaver, it tasted faintly of bitter almonds which is also what the poison cyanide tastes like, although Billy does not appear to realise this.
The clues in ‘The Speckled Band’ are very different they can lead down many paths and the true path is a very unobvious one. Unlike ‘The Landlady’
‘The Speckled Band’ has a motive for Dr Roylott to commit the murders that is money which Helens mother left to her in her will to be given when she was married. This was money which Dr Roylott would not then have. Helen Stoner has come to ask Sherlock Holmes to investigate the murder of her sister as now she is also to be married she fears the same fate. On the night of her sisters death Julia came into Helens room and complained that she could smell cigarette smoke from Dr Roylott. She also said that about three o’clock the past few nights she had been hearing a whistling noise which woke her. Julia went back to her room, at roughly three o’clock Helen Stoner was awakened by her sisters scream. Then a sharp whistling and a metallic bang.
She ran to her sisters room and all she could whisper before she passed out & died was ‘Oh my god Helen, it was the band. The speckled band!’ Julia was in her nightdress and the windows were barred, the door was locked from the inside. And the fireplace is barred. The doctor from when he worked in India has exotic animals including a cheetah and a baboon. He also allows gypsies onto the estate. At first it seems that the speckled band could be one of the gypsies neckerchiefs. Then Holmes actually goes to see the manor house and finds that because off repair work Helen is sleeping in Julia’s bedroom. When he goes into the bedroom the bed is bolted to the floor, there is a ventilator between Dr Roylott’s room and Julia’s room and a fake bell pull not far from the ventilator or bed.
What actually had happened was that Dr Roylott had a poisonous snake in his bedroom locked in a safe, which he let out at night to try and kill Julia because if she got married she would get his money. He then called the snake back by a whistle explaining the whistling sound. Then Dr Roylott would shut the safe explaining the metallic bang. There are several lines of clues in this story like the gypsies murdered Julia which is the obvious one but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle disguises the small clues to the true line which creates mystery as certain bits do not fall into place.
These two stories are set 100 years apart so the language is very different. But even ‘The Landlady’ uses very different language to today. For example the author describes Billy wearing a ‘Trilby Hat’ that I have never heard of. But most of the language is similar. In ‘The Speckled Band’ the language is very descriptive unlike in ‘The Landlady’ where it is less descriptive and feels more like the real word.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Roald Dahl use every device they can to fill these books with mystery. But although ‘The Landlady’ has some suspense it has little compared to ‘The Adventure Of The Speckled Band’.
