His unattractive appearance reinforces the image of a villain. He is described as a powerful man: “huge” and terrifyingly “framed ……in the aperture.” Here Conan Doyle signals to the readers his immense power and strength. The author depicts his “peculiar” as a mixture of the “professional” and of the “ agricultural type. His attire consists of a “black top hat …… long frock coat and pair of high gaiters.” Eccentricity of dress helps signal his unconventional nature. Roylott’s “large face” depicts “every evil passion” he has inside him. Conan Doyle describes his “deep-set, bile shot” eyes, intended to inspire fear and repulsion in the 19th Century Society. His face is seared with “every evil passion” and his “thin, fleshless nose” gives the resemblance to a “fierce old bird of prey.”
Careful description of action and speech has been employed to emphasise his dangerous/threatening presence. Great care is taken to choose actions that show his wickedness. Dr Roylott “screams” at Holmes, “swinging his hunting crop in one hand.” This shows he is uncontrollable in his manner, and cannot control himself in front of a gentleman. He is crude and vulgar in his speech, and tells Holmes, “You dare to meddle in my affairs….” This technique is effective as the villain is seen to be threatening towards the gentleman of the story, Holmes.
We learn that he is unchivalrous towards women, terrifying his stepdaughter. Helen tells Holmes, “He is a hard man…. he hardly knows his own strength.” Implying Dr Roylott has been violent towards her and other people, and he is uncontrollable in his temper. She reports of his unsociable relationship of the people of Stoke Moran saying, “he is the terror of the village.” She speaks of the time he “hurled the local blacksmith over the parapet and into the stream.” This is a technique often used by authors; they show their villains uncivil relationships with neighbours or family. Roylott is shown as isolated, with few friends, seen in the company of disreputable, unpleasant people such as the gypsies that inhabit his lawn.
Conan Doyle has presented his readers with an appropriately ignoble history, a technique often used to give the impression the villain comes from bad blood. The villain in The Speckled Band descends from a wealthy family that starts to deteriorate and lose it high status and reputation. The writer describes how, “ four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition,” and how Dr Roylott could only follow his family’s by being disgraceful and wasteful with money.
When Helen Stoner visits Holmes she emphasises her stepfather’s “inherited mania” by speaking of his “ violence of temper approaching to mania,” that had been hereditary in the men of the family and, in her fathers case, had intensified during a long residence in the tropics.
By giving further examples of Dr Roylott’s character and actions, such as a criminal record and inherited mania, the writer is reinforcing the fact that the character is a portrait of evil.
The setting is appropriately sinister, very fitting for a character that is less than desirable. The exterior is gloomy/forbidding; the building is of “grey, lichen-blotched stone,” and had two curving wings, “like two claws of a crab.” This gives the impression of a dangerous creature, just waiting to pounce. Conan Doyle presents the reader with a house boarded up on one side, where the roof caved in and the windows were broken. This is a picture of ruin and decay, perhaps to reflect Roylott’s moral decay.
The threat of danger is emphasised by the band of gypsies that inhabit his lawn, and inside the house by the cheetah and baboon that are kept as pets. Dr Roylott is perhaps given such dangerous creatures to show that he too is dangerous. The gypsies are described as “vagabonds” and may be there to show that Roylott is only worthy of friends of the lowest kind.
In conclusion, to show Conan Doyle’s disapproval of Dr Roylott’s nature he is constantly compared unfavourably to Holmes, who is seen as the perfect gentleman of that time. The fact that in the end, it is Holmes that helps Dr Roylott to come to his unfortunate end demonstrates that good always triumphs over evil.
Maybe the fact that Roylott is a doctor makes his crimes seem even more severe. He is placed in a position of trust and responsibility and he has abused his position. “When a doctor goes wrong he is the first of criminals.”
