The villain of the speckled band is Dr. Grimesby Roylott; our first visual encounter of this man is set at Holmes’s apartment in London. The first way he is described is “huge” large, spanning from the floor (his feet), to the crossbar of the door (his head) and also side to side (his middle area). He was said to have been dressed in “a particular mixture of the professional and of the agricultural, having a black top hat, a long frock coat, and a pair of high gaiters,” (protective leggings.) This indicates the time period in which the story was set; this was the fashion back then. “A hunting crop swinging in his hand,” this crop may have been for defence or as a weapon, did Roylott have the crop to try to scare Holmes, I think so. I believe he took his crop in to the room to try and intimidate Holmes. Though it did not work. His face was portrayed as being “large, seared with a thousand wrinkles. Burned yellow, with the sun and marked with evil passion.” I can picture an old man, with his face glaring at Holmes, scrunched up. His eyes were described as being “ deep-set, bile shot and the high thin fleshless nose gave him some resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.” The last part of that sentence sums up the picture in my head, his piercing eyes and face, evil old a nasty fierce old man. Even when he is spoken to he snaps, “prey take a seat,” “I will do nothing of the kind.” He is a vicious man. Nearer the beginning of the story Miss Helen Stoner said “He is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.” Right from the beginning Roylott is the main suspect in “the speckled band.” Even with the red herrings such as the gypsies, the wild animals etc, he is the main suspect, and Holmes does not get side tracked by these things. He is aggressive and menacing, he is a calculated criminal and planned each detail of the murders of his two-step daughters though he does not entirely succeed. Roylott is the type of person you would expect to commit such a nasty crime; he is hard, physically and mentally. But he is described as a “pauper,” and as Holmes finds out he has the motive, Money. “Each daughter can claim £250, in case of marriage…while even one of them would cripple him to a serious extent.”
In contrast, Mary Maloney is not physically violent. The first image of her is in her home waiting for her husband (of who she loved dearly) to return from work. She was said to keep looking at the clock, “without anxiety, merely to please her self with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer to the time when he would come.” She was portrayed in my mind almost like an angel, she was “glowing, placid” even her movements were described as “tranquil.” She even stood to kiss him as he came through the door. This is totally different to the image of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, who actually appears as though he could murder his stepdaughters. Mary Maloney doesn’t seem at all capable of murdering her husband up until the actual time of the murder. She loved everything about her husband, maybe so much she didn’t want him to leave her, we don’t really know what he told her, we can only guess this is what it was. It explains (later on) how she got frightened with her husbands abnormal behaviour. When he tells her his ‘news’ she rejects it, he drifts away from her, she is shocked but was still in her normal state of mind, normal mode, but shocked. Mary Maloney “at that point” did the deed. I think she did this because of her husband’s rejection; it was an act of pure passion, raw emotion. I don’t think she meant to kill him, just injure him, but after the blow Dahl wrote, “she stepped back a pace, waiting.” So did she mean to kill him? I’m still not convinced, but her twisted mind does the rest for her, it turns in to the mind much like Roylott’s, deep and twisted, a criminals mind. She plans her moves from there on, she even makes sure her image is normal before going to the grocers. She had to let her mind take control, for the baby’s sake, “She didn’t know and wasn’t prepared to take a chance,” on her baby’s life. She needed to protect herself and her un-born child. Roylott had a motive of money, for the lives of each of his stepdaughters, where as Maloney (as I’ve said before) acted on pure emotion, as a reaction to bad news, she (un-like Roylott) was provoked. To have a female killer was quite weird, but it is not uncommon in modern times I also believe Conan Doyle’s audience would have been quite shocked to find the murderer was a woman. I found it rather amusing above anything, Mary Maloney the pregnant housewife killing her perfect husband. It’s hard to imagine something like that happening, someone like that killing someone she obviously cared for, it just wasn’t right.
Holmes the detective in “the speckled band” was a great detective; he conducted an open-minded enquiry, linked the motive and the method well in order to catch the criminal, didn’t get side tracked by red herrings, he was an all round good detective and had the case fully on his mind at all times. Holmes listened to everything Miss Stoner had to say and asked a lot of background questions to find out the motive etc. The detective in this story is nothing like the detective in the other story (Noonan, of lamb to the slaughter). I say this because Holmes is 100% dedicated to the case and his mind is bent on solving it. He uses his mind well, and lets Watson clarify his suspicions/ second his thoughts and suspicions, “Did you ever see a bed fastened like that before?” “I cannot say I have.” The detective’s attention to detail and certain question’s he asks all help him solve the case. He does not dismiss anything; all evidence is looked at thoroughly, for example the gypsies, “But what, then, did the gipsies do?” ….
“I see many objections to any such theory.” He looks at what he has been told, and decides that it does not make sense that the gypsies have anything to do with the case. I believe Doyle wanted the reader to see Holmes as an intelligent, well-organised man. Who loved nothing better than an unusual case to solve, “working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth … did not tend to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual.” The detective in this case is a very admirable man; Holmes dominates the story as to show how the detective worked at these times. He is portrayed as a very intelligent man and the story follows him linking knowledge and clues, he finds along the way, to show what killed Miss. Julia Stoner, and who was really responsible for her death.
In contrast Jack Noonan was an extremely bad detective; he conducted a closed minded enquiry, because he knew the family and so ruled out Mary Maloney from having anything to do with the case. Unlike Holmes, Noonan cannot link clues, in the text it quotes, “Noonan discovered a small patch of congealed blood on the dead man’s head.” There is no other mention of this afterwards, this was a major clue and it was dismissed. If the blood had cooled and become jelly like, surely it could not have been his. It was a foreign sample and was not followed up. Noonan did not check for entry, forced or otherwise. Where as Holmes made Watson climb through the window, he checked the chimneys and he asked Miss. Helen lots of questions to find if the rooms were perfectly secure in all the main entry points. Noonan fits the image of most peoples feelings towards the police in these days, he is no super human, just another policeman, and not a good one at that. Mary Maloney offered Noonan a drink of whisky, he knows to take it is wrong but he replies, “It’s not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going.” She knows it’s wrong, and she knows she is tampering with the case, but if he was under the influence of alcohol his case may be classed as invalid and dismissed. But by the time this had occurred, Noonan had already (in my opinion) given in, he had looked and the search was in successful. I believe Noonan was too soft with Mary; he was to friendly with her treating her more as a friend than a potential witness or suspect. I despise Jack Noonan, he (to me) is a total idiot, why is he a detective if he has not the heart to be a one.
“The speckled band” is set in several different locations, starting in Holmes’s flat/apartment, or to narrow it down further, in Watson’s sleeping quarters and the living room of his home. Then, the main location is at Stoke Moran, there are scenes set on the lawns, in the sleeping chambers and on surrounding grounds (the “dark road” outside the inn etc…) The things that stood out as strikingly odd to me were the windows in the rooms of Stoke Moran, “the windows were blocked by old fashioned shutters with broad iron bars….” These indicate the time period in which this story was set. The settings in “the speckled band” do actually fit the criteria of a typical murder story. Most of it is set within the home of the murder victim, or the next suspected suspect (i.e. Miss. Helen Stoner.) I believe the quiet country settings give a sense of falseness to the tale, as though something such as murder could not happen there. But with the vision of Roylott and the vision of wild animals roaming around freely, this is soon crushed.
In contrast, “Lamb to the slaughter” is not set in so many different locations. It is set mainly in the living room of Mary Maloney’s home, where she murdered Patrick, her husband, and so where the police conducted most of their enquires. Though it is also, at part, set in the grocers where Mary Maloney sets up an alibi, in Sam the grocer, and gives him no suspicions, leaving no hints, that she in fact was the one who murdered her husband. The attitudes of the policemen, I would say, indicated the time in which this story was set. They have sloppy attitudes towards the case and this is shown as at the end when they are offered the lamb/ murder weapon they take it, and so are left with no solid evidence, or no murder weapon. The settings are odd for the murder in “lamb to the slaughter” as it is a warm, loving place, and everything looked normal, like a typical night to any person. I believe the homely atmosphere did help Mary secure an alibi, as she was going to cook tea and everything was prepared for their meal. Meat in the oven and everything prepared. Mary Maloney’s home does not really symbolise to me a typical murder scene, she has kept it clean and tidy, as she knew her husband was soon to return from work. It was far to cosy and warm for me to imagine it as a murder scene.
A*
