“It is not cold which makes me shiver, it is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.”
This creates yet more suspense for the reader.
Julia is already dead as the story is told and Conan Doyle very cleverly uses the past death of Julia to create suspense later when her sister Helen is under the threat of being killed. A classic victim is a distressed female, usually young and good-looking.
Julia Stoner was a good-looking woman in her thirties and of wealthy descent that was distressed by family affairs. This is classic to the finest detail. She came to a mysterious death in the Roylott household inside a locked room, at night. This is the perfect crime. In a classic murder mystery story the crime must seem completely inexplicable to everyone but the detective. The audience, the characters in the book and even the police would be bemused by the crime that has taken place.
The villain and the motive. In any classic murder mystery story the villain must be, violent yet devious and must have an evil motive for murder. Doyle creates the perfect villain, the sisters’ stepfather, Dr. Roylott. He had a violent temperament and occasionally lacked in sanity. He scared the sisters to the extent that they had
“No feeling of security unless our doors were locked.”
He even scared the people of the local village with his
“Immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable anger.”
Again, this sticks to the classic model of a villain and it is no wonder that Helen and Julia felt so strongly about their security.
The villain plays an integral part of a murder mystery. It puts fear and suspicion into the minds of the audience. The imagery used to describe the stepfather is intense and it burns an image of terror and evil into the mind of the reader if even in a slightly cliché way. But this cliché only makes the description more typical to the classic portrayal of a villain.
Classically, the motive must involve money. And the motive of stepfather is the money he will gain as the result of the death of one of the girls after marriage. His income had faced a decrease and so he is in need of money.
“If both girls had married this beauty would have had a pittance while even one of them would have crippled him to a serious extent.”
In simpler terms he received a thousand pounds a year to maintain the estate and look after the sisters until they get married, when they have rites to a percentage of that sum. When this happens Dr. Roylott was to lose a great deal of money and hence this gives him the perfect motive to kill the girls at the event of their marriage.
Although there can only be one true villain in a classic murder mystery, there are deviations thrown in by Doyle to put the audience off and to make them think. In the Speckled Band the gipsies are part of that deviation.
“It must be those wretched gypsies in the plantation.”
To enhance the readers’ confusion, Conan Doyle puts in possible evidence that it was the gipsies. At the time of Julia’s death she proclaimed,
“Oh my God Helen! It was the Band! The Speckled Band!”
The band of gipsies that lived in the plantation about the house wore spotted handkerchiefs over their heads and Helen supposed that this was the reason for Julia’s proclamation.
In the mind of the reader all the possibilities will be going through their heads. The animals kept by the sisters’ stepfather will also play a part in that suspicion. While all this is going through the heads of the readers, and the impression is given that this is happening with the characters in the book as well, there is one person who has no alternating thought anywhere in his mind…
The detective and his assistant. The detective must be of the utmost intelligence and should be polite and attentive with the ability to deduce the most defined detail from a most simple observation. The perfect depiction of this is Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is the most famous detective in English literature, even today.
His assistant, Dr. Watson, also has these characteristics, but no matter the extent of his willingness to understand, he cannot match Holmes intelligence and ability.
“I fancy that I may have deduced a little more, I imagine you saw all that I did.”
This is Holmes putting Watson in his place. Watson is merely his assistant. This is also securing the readers perspective on Sherlock Holmes.
All through the Speckled Band Sherlock Holmes displays his distinct ability to decipher the exact meaning of a situation. At the same time that Holmes is doing this, the reader becomes more and more confused about the situation in hand. This is where Conan Doyle’s first person narrative becomes crucial to the story. He uses Dr. Watson as a translator of Holmes’ genius. Watson helps the readers understand exactly what’s going on and, in a way, puts their minds at ease. This is typical of Arthur Conan Doyle. He creates a psychological battle in the minds of the reader. He uses Holmes to create a trouble with interpretation of sequences past and to come and then simplifies it through Watson. This is what makes all Conan Doyle’s stories so brilliant for the reader.
Conan Doyle uses Holmes to build up suspense with a possible flaw in Holmes’ brilliance when he declares that the committer of the crime is more cunning than himself. This is essential to the story. Holmes has been portrayed as the best detective in England up to this point and now he himself declares that he has been defeated. This creates extreme suspense for the reader.
Also among Holmes’ abilities is his ability to disguise himself. He makes himself appear to be a person with distinct business at the Roylott estate.
“This fellow should think that we had come as architects or on some definite business.”
This adds to Holmes’ list of excellencies. He is now toying with the mind of the villain in order to accomplish he task he has been set.
The unexpected ending. By the end of the Speckled band Doyle has created such suspense and confusion in the minds of the readers that they are waiting in dire anticipation to find out how it will end. The Speckled Band is, in fact, a poisonous snake native to India, the living place of Dr. Roylott for several years. Roylott used the snake to make its way through the ventilation and into the bedroom of Miss Stoner and poison her. No matter how intelligent the reader they would not have the ability to predict this ending. This is a classic ending because it surprises the reader and although the identity of the villain was obvious all the way through the story, it was never clear how he would have murdered his stepdaughter. This is again excellent writing by Conan Doyle. He builds up tension by repeating the events of the past death of Julia Stoner when Holmes re-enacts the sequences of that fateful night with Helen Stoner as a trap for Dr. Roylott.
Arthur Conan Doyle uses vast imagery and description to keep the reader glued. It is with this imagery that he creates the tension and creates a sense of tragedy in the mind of the reader. The word black is repeated several times, and this gives a feeling of doom and imbalance. This, paired with nocturnal, silence, darkness and all the other words of sinister imagery creates more tension for the reader. It all builds up and gives the reader an incentive to carry on, to find out what will occur in the next sequence. All the way through there is a mysterious atmosphere and this only pushes the story further into the classic murder mystery genre. Everything down to he scenery and especially the buildings create a tense atmosphere. Conan Doyle wants to put a picture into the mind of the reader, such that they can almost see exactly they are reading about.
“Grey, lichen-blotched stone…windows broken…picture of ruin.”
All these are distinct factors of a house that can be picture in an infinite number of different ways for each individual reader.
As this essay concludes the Speckled Band by sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a classic murder mystery story. All the criteria in the second paragraph have been fulfilled. There can be no argument that Sherlock Holmes is the greatest fictional detective in the whole of English literature and Arthur Conan Doyle is, without doubt, the most memorable writer of classic Murder Mystery stories up to the present day.
