He also refuses a snack and decides not to go out which is what they usually do on Thursdays. He then refused to eat and kept telling Mary to “sit down”. All of these things show that he is leading up to tell her something that she doesn’t want to hear. It is clear that he doesn’t want to be with her anymore. Patrick Maloney in this story isn’t a typical victim. He isn’t a typical victim because a typical/traditional victim would be a woman that is scared and/or helpless but in this case the victim is a man.
In The Speckled Band the intended victim is Helen Stoner but her sister Julia had already been murdered. At the beginning of the story Helen Stoner is described as being in a “considerable state of excitement” and then later she is terrified “it is not cold that makes me shiver, it is fear Mr. Holmes it is terror”. Helen Stoner herself spoke these words. She is also described “frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal”. She is afraid of two things, Dr. Roylott and the fact that she is in the same room as when her sister Julia was killed. This is typical murder mystery or detective story because there is the typical victim a helpless and scared woman, and the typical murder an unpleasant, greedy and evil man. It helps that it is set in a scary environment whereas Lamb To The Slaughter isn’t.
In Lamb to The Slaughter the murderer is Mary Maloney who kills her husband Patrick Maloney. She is described as having a radiant glow, “for this is her sixth month with child”. I believe Mary Maloney killed her husband Patrick Maloney because he is going to leave her. This would have caused great problems for Mary Maloney because she is pregnant. She would have no one to help her. She would also have to find a job (which at that point in time is virtually impossible). When she is finished killing him, she starts to think naturally again. She decides, she doesn’t want to get caught because she is pregnant. If she were to be caught she wouldn’t know what would happen to her child. I feel that she had a right to be irrational about things because her husband wanted to leave her. I don’t think she should have killed him, but I do feel sympathy for her.
The murderer in The Speckled band is Doctor Grimsby Roylott. He is a “huge man”, and “so tall that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway”. He has a large face with “a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun”. He is also described as a “bird of prey” where as Helen Stoner is described as a “frightened animal”.
Dr Roylott tries to kill Helen Stoner because she has a large sum of money, that she would receive when and if she gets married. She wants to get married therefore Dr Roylott tries to kill her so he can keep the money for himself. I feel that there is no space for sympathy with Dr Roylott because his motive for trying to kill Helen Stoner is one of the seven deadly sins, GREED.
At the beginning of Lamb to the Slaughter, the setting is warm and welcoming “there is a slow smiling air about Mary Maloney…everything she did…is curiously tranquil”. The atmosphere that Mary had created around herself, is of great tranquility and peacefulness. I feel no sympathy towards Patrick, because leaving Mary is an evil thing to do, seeing as how she is pregnant.
In the Speckled Band, the setting is more dull and gloomy. The house is described as “of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion, and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on each side”. I find this strange as almost everything in this detective story is described by being compared to an animal. I feel that the atmosphere around the house is spooky almost. It is strange and unusual. There are things however, apart from the house, that create the atmosphere of evil and horror. Dr Roylott also keeps a cheetah and a baboon roaming around the house.
The detectives in Lamb to the Slaughter are made out to be stupid. Detectives are supposed to look at things, find clues, and work their way towards solving the mystery. However, the detectives in Lamb to the Slaughter don’t; they drink whiskey that Mary gets for them (they aren’t supposed to drink when they are on duty) They ate food, which they’re not supposed to do, (this food happened to be the murder weapon). The detectives are “thick and sloppy”.
In The Speckled Band the detective Sherlock Holmes, is very clever and look at EVERY clue just like proper detectives. He has great ability as a detective and shows it throughout the story. As I read the story, I noticed the clues but what I thought had happened was wrong.
In The Lamb to the Slaughter Mary Maloney, (the murderer) gets away with her crime of killing her husband. She does this by going to the shops to get extra things for dinner but also to get an alibi. In the shop she acts completely normal as if nothing had happened. She then calls the detectives and police to tell them what happened (what she had made up), and then to top it all she got the sloppy detectives to eat the murder weapon. This is an unorthodox detective story as this isn’t what would normally happen. In a normal detective story, things and scenes have a certain mood to them, serious, spooky, strange, whereas this story is made out to be comical.
The Speckled Band the murderer gets his dues and is killed by the murder weapon. I think that Dr Grimsby Roylott (the murderer) got what he deserved. This is what I think a proper detective story or murder mystery should be like; with a clever detective, clues, and the crime being solved properly.
In Lamb to the Slaughter the part I found most exciting is when Mary Maloney told the murder detectives to eat the murder weapon. I wanted to read on to see if they really would eat it. There is however another part of the story that made me want to read on. It is when Mary Maloney killed her husband Patrick “Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head”. I wanted to find out what would happen after she killed him and what she is going to do.”
In The Speckled Band the part I found exciting is when Dr. Roylott turned up at Sherlock Holmes’ house (“the old man furiously”, and calling Sherlock Holmes names for example “Holmes the busybody”). I wanted to read on because I thought that there maybe a fight between Dr. Roylott and some one else, however there isn’t.
Another time I found The Speckled Band exciting is when Dr. Roylott had been heard screaming after being bitten by his own snake(the murder weapon). ‘Suddenly there broke the silence of the night, the most horrible cry”.
There are details that show, The Speckled Band is set in Victorian times. One of theses is the fact that Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson rode in a carriage on their way to Dr. Roylott’s mansion. Another is that they still used candles.
In Lamb to the Slaughter is set in the 1950’s. It is a traditional family, wife at home, husband at work, wife makes dinner, waits for husband to come home. This is the sort of family that would have been around in the 1950’s. Another detail that show that this story is set in the 1950’s is that the man(Patrick Maloney) is at work all day whilst the woman (Mary Maloney) stays at home and does house work cooks the dinner.
In the both of these stories I have noticed that there are no female detectives or policewomen in them. This doesn’t surprise me because in the times that these stories were written, there were no female detectives or policewomen on the force. In fact in these times women don’t work at all.
After reading, analyzing and comparing the two stories, the one which I enjoyed most is Lamb to the Slaughter. This is because I prefer comical stories to serious detective stories. However The Speckled Band is a proper, traditional detective story. I know this because it has the entire makings of a one. It has the most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, clues(the bell rope, the air vent, the saucer of milk and that Julia Stoner said before “it’s the speckled band” just before she died. I think that there will always be someone somewhere who will like a good detective story. The reason for this is because some people enjoy the excitement of a murder and the tension that occurs during these detective stories or murder mysteries.
