Lamb to the slaughter Vs Speckled band

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Lamb to the slaughter Vs Speckled band

By Tamer Mustafa

“Lamb to the slaughter” Vs “Speckled band”

The conventions of the murder mystery genre are that a murder is usually committed at the start of the story and is carefully premeditated. A detective and his colleague are brought in to investigate the felony, but all they find are a lot of perplexing clues and insinuating evidence, which are gradually and meticulously put together, with the detective enlightening the audience to who the delinquent is and how they perpetrated the crime at the closing stages of the tale.

Murder mysteries with these conventions are “Murder she wrote”, “Taggart”, “Frost”, “Quavanagh QC” and “Johnathan Creek”.

The “Speckled band” is a archetypal example of this genre. A murder was committed at the start of the story (two years previously), then an ingenious but peculiar detective is summoned upon the scene with his dedicated assistant.

“I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions.”

The detective shrewdly works out all the concealed evidence and at the cessation the detective ultimately divulges all and manages to ‘rescue’ the quarry.

Conversely, in “Lamb to the slaughter”, the slaughter is implemented by a character whom we’ve already encountered, who is scarcely for this category, a woman. The police officers in this story are not the smartest of officers, they appear very narrow-minded and not equipped for change, they don’t consider women as equals or to be killers.

“It’s the old story….Get the weapon, and you’ve your man.”  

The clues are steadily covered up until there is no substantiation left permitting the eradicator to get away with the crime totally, with no one being suspicious of her at all.

If we take into account the customary behaviour of murderers in this genre, the two killers either abide by the conventions or absolutely demolish them.

The murderer in “the Speckled band”, Doctor Roylott, is the conventional villain. He is a callous and vindictive stepfather who likes to dominate and use his stepdaughter.

“Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the white wrist.”

He is a sturdy, incensed and violent man by nature.

“Violence of temper approaching mania has been heredity in the men of the family… intensified by his ling residence in the tropics.”

This was demonstrated in both India and England.

“In a fit of anger … he beat his native butler to death …  he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream.”

His motivation isn’t love or hate but greed, greed for money. His dead wife left him £1,100 in her will, which shortly turned to £750 however in the occasion of his daughters marriage he would have no money left for himself.

“Each daughter can claim an income of £250 in the case of marriage. It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married this beauty would have had a mere pittance.”

He deceitfully plans his murders so that there is no evidence of how Julia died, albeit all and sundry suspected his participation. Nevertheless, he panics once he discovers that he is under scrutiny. He tracks his stepdaughter to Holmes’ office where he then threatens him.

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“Don t you dare to meddle with my affairs … I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here … seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.”

Whilst in Mary Maloney’s case, the author pays no notice to these predictable and perhaps old-fashioned conventions. Mrs Maloney is a six-month pregnant housewife who time and again worries about satisfying her husband, so why should she want to kill him?

“Darling, shall I get your slippers? … Would you like me to get you some cheese?”

She seems to be utterly wedged in ...

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