“This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid,” he said. He told her; throughout it she was watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further from her with each word. “So there it is.” He added. “And I know it’s a kind of a bad time to be telling you, but there simply wasn’t any other way. Of course I’ll give you money and see you’re looked after. But there needn’t really fuss. It wouldn’t be very good for my job”.
They don’t tell us what Patrick said to Mary but this is how Roald Dahl creates tension and people want to read more. This is known as expectation.
The victim in The Speckled Band is Julia Stoner who has a sister, called Helen Stoner and a Stepfather, Dr Roylott. “You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia had no great pleasure in her lives”. Julia is first described as a person with no pleasure in her life and at the age of 30 she is getting a lot of grey hairs. Sherlock Holmes added, “I observe that you are shivering.”
“It is not cold which makes me shiver,” said the women in a low voice, changing her seat as requested. “What, then?”
“It is fear, Mr Holmes. It is terror.” This shows how terrified she is about her sister’s death.
The murder in Lamb to the Slaughter is different from other murder stories. The weapon here is a leg of lamb. “Mary went upstairs holding the thin bone end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.”
“For God’s sake,” he said, hearing her, but not turning round. “Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.”
“Patrick getting even angrier as he is repeatedly saying that he doesn’t want any supper.” At that point Mary without any thinking she walked up behind him and threw the frozen leg of lamb on the back of his head, Patrick collapsed within four to five seconds. She done this because of what Patrick said to her early in the kitchen, from this we see that Patrick has done something wrong to upset Mary Maloney. She doesn’t want to be caught because she will lose everything.
What about the child, which she has got? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill then both mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do? From these questions nobody will want to be caught
I think that I don’t blame her for what she has done because of the grief she has been getting from her husband, Patrick. Also she was angry from the conversation with Patrick.
The weapon in The Speckled Band is the snake. Nobody thought throughout the story that a snake had killed Julia. The detectives, Sherlock Holmes never imagined it could be a snake. “How about poison?” “The doctors examined her for it, but without success.” They might have thought she had drank poison, but the doctors found none of the chemicals.
“The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India”. Sherlock Holmes was on the right track from the idea of a snake when he saw Dr Roylott’s animals from India.
The only reason Roylott had done this because he didn’t want her to marry to someone and leave. I would respond to Roylott as a man of disobedient, a person who is selfish, because Roylott is a lonely man he can’t bear to see anyone together. The idea of a snake is very clever.
The setting in Lamb to the Slaughter is dark and creepy.
“She went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped”. Here the atmosphere seems creepy like something is going to happen.
My imagination of how the living room is set is that the lights are dim and the room is small and the sofa’s are an old design, everything is cramped together. After the murder the room goes quiet and within seconds all you can hear is the violence of the crash. Mary has created an atmosphere of horror, an atmosphere that you don’t want to be around her, because she might be capable of doing another murder. I do feel sympathy for the victim wanting to leave her because she has no excitement in her life; she just waits for her husband to come home from work.
The setting of the old house in The Speckled Band is a Victorian style atmosphere. To describe the house, “The building was of grey, lichen blotched stone, with a high central portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown on each side. In one of these wings the windows were broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin. The central portion was in little better repair, but the right hand block was comparatively modern, and the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys, showed that this was where the family resided.”
Here describes the house and this proves that it was a modern house. The way is described by Sherlock Holmes. Other details in this story that add to the atmosphere of evil and horror are the inside of the house. The way everything is spaced out and so big, also the idea of having Indian animals for instance a snake, a cheetah and a baboon. “There isn’t a cat in it, for example?”
“No, What a strange idea!”
“Well, look at this!” He took a small saucer of milk, which stood on the top of it.
Here it created horror as to why does Dr Roylott keep Indian animals.
In Lamb to the Slaughter the detectives don’t really look into the case much, of Patrick Maloney death as much. They don’t look for clues they just keep asking Mary Maloney questions and just keep walking around the house. The detectives eat the evidence, which they shouldn’t have done.
“Well,” she said. “Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick’s too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be terribly hungry by now because it’s long past your suppertime, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven? It’ll be cooked just right by now.
Mrs. Maloney even begged, “Please,” she begged. “Please eat it”. She wants them to eat the evidence. Here is a sense of irony.
The detectives in the Speckled Band first find out as much information as they can before starting the case and possible suggestions as to why Julia was murdered. They get the clues from Helen Stoner sister of Julia. The detectives do a search on the house with a magnifying glass, outside and inside. In all three bedrooms, in the stepfather’s bedroom they find out about the clue of him keeping a cheetah and a baboon. In Julia’s room they see that there is a rope by the bed, which is supposed to be a bell but doesn’t work, there is a ventilator going to her stepfather’s room and also the bed is clamped to the floor. In Helen’s room there is building work going on there but it isn’t necessary. The detectives build up the clues as they go along to see who can be the murderer but they see that Dr Roylott is keeping Indian animals, Sherlock Holmes came up the idea of a snake killing Julia, the most deadliest snake in India. If they had no chance of inspecting the house, Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have came up with the idea of the snake, which linked up with the Indian animals. Tension is developed here by the idea of why Helen’s stepfather has kept Indian animals.
The murderer in Lamb to the Slaughter who was Mary Maloney was proven innocent by the detectives, they kept thinking that someone came in the house and hit Patrick on the back of the head with a metal object. “Would she mind having a look around to see if anything was missing a very big spanner, for example, or a heavy metal vase”? The detective asking his partner.
The murderer in this story has no chance of getting caught because firstly the police ate the evidence and secondly the act she put on when she went to the grocery store was superior, as if her husband was still alive. The thing that was different in this murder mystery was how it was planned after she had killed the victim, Patrick Maloney.
The murderer in The Speckled Band was taken back to where he came from. “Thrust this creature back into its den”. Nothing could have happened to the murderer in this story except death but the snake was trained to kill Julia by Dr Roylott and didn’t do it by purpose. The idea of a snake being trained by the stepfather to kill her own stepdaughter is not feasible. Murder mysteries normally a male/female killer, set in a castle or haunted mansion, a rough plan of a murder mystery. I would like a murder mystery to end as the one in Lamb to the Slaughter where they eat the evidence and they will never find out who the murderer is; it makes the reader more enthusiastic to read on and find out more.
The part, which I liked in Lamb to the Slaughter, was the ending because it was very evil and clever. A real killer wouldn’t think of that idea. They will never find the true murderer even if they worked on the case for the rest of their lives because they have no evidence.
“Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carting a thing like that around with them longer than they need.”
One of them belched.
“Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.”
“Probably right under our very noses. What do you think, Jack?”
And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle. These lines are the last lines of the murder story.
Another part of the story, which is superior, is the part when she kills him with the frozen leg of lamb.
At that point Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.
The part, which I liked in The Speckled Band, was the part when they inspect the house it was very professional the way they found out about the animals and the bed clamped to the bed. It was high quality work.
“The band the speckled band! Whispered Holmes. The part when I found out it was the snake, which was on the last page of the story.
The Speckled Band is set in Victorian times; I know this because it was first published in 1892. Also the way the house was with simple bedrooms, wooden boards and the out side of the house, the way it was described earlier in the story.
Lamb to the Slaughter is set in the 1950’s because. I think it’s unusual that there are no female detectives in these stories because firstly I believe that men and women think differently in murder cases, there ideas. In The Speckled Band they use the famous detectives Sherlock Holmes that makes the case look professional and in Lamb to the Slaughter there are two detectives, a photographer, a fingerprint man and policemen. It is highly unusual to see a female detective in a murder mystery; it builds the tension a bit down. It won’t keep the story up and going.
HOW IS LANGUAGE USED BY THE AUTHORS TO CREATE AN ATMOSPHERE OF SUSPENSE THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO READ MORE?
Suspense is created by how the clues in both stories link up to the murder, no reader will have a thought in their head that the Speckled Band was the murder. The use of using a frozen lamb is premium. People would want to find out more in Lamb to the Slaughter, questions going in their head for instance; does she get caught with the murder? What happened to the evidence? In the Speckled Band, questions like, Why does Helen’s stepfather keep Indian animals?
Both stories have a state of excitement or anxiety caused by having to wait for something.
The story which I liked best was Lamb to the Slaughter, because how the murder was set. A murderer will unlikely use a frozen leg of lamb to kill someone and the way she makes the policemen eat the evidence. People will always like to read murder mysteries because they make you want to read more. Reading murder mysteries is great because you can always try and solve it yourself. Overall I will say that murder mysteries are the superlative genre that I like to read.
