“Five little vivid spots, the marks of four fingers
and a thumb, were printed upon the
white wrist”
This shows that Dr Roylott has grabbed Helen very hard from the wrist and he has printer his hand mark on her wrist.
On the other hand, Mary Maloney in ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’ was not a typical villain. I don’t think anyone expected it from her.
She had soft fair skin, large dark eyes and a soft mouth. She had smooth soft skin. She seemed to be glowing because she was pregnant. Her skin had gone really nice because of the pregnancy. We are told;
“Her skin-for this was her sixth month with
child-had acquired a wonderful
translucent quality”
Before she murdered her husband she was sweet, innocent, gentle and fragile.
She was like Patrick’s slave. She was always jumping up to something for him. She liked to wait on him hand and foot. An example of this is;
“I’ll get it”
Or
“Shall I get your slippers?”
Or
“Do you want some cheese?"
How ever, she was living in a fantasy land as she thought that he loved her as much as she loved him. We are told;
“She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man,
and to feel-as a sunbathed feels the sun-
that warm glow that came out of him to her they
were together”
Later we learn that her husband didn’t like her and he was going to leave her.
Then when she found out he was going to leave her she killed him. She killed him by hitting a frozen leg of lamb over his head. As soon as she murdered her husband she changes into more of a villainous type. She shows a more evil side o her.
She starts to lie and she becomes devious, cold and calculated. She plans out exactly how she is going to save herself and the baby.
She goes to the shop and she creates a prefect alibi so no one can blame her for the murder.
She goes home and phones the police to tell them that some one has murdered Patrick. She acts all different and innocent with them. She pretends to cry and be very upset about it and she acts like she hasn’t murdered her husband.
At the end ;
“In the other room, Mary
Maloney began to giggle”
She almost reaches hysteria. She laughs because she got away with murder. She got away with murder because she had a good alibi, she got the police men to eat the evidence and she wasn’t the villainous type.
Mary Maloney is different from Dr Grimesby Roylott because Dr Roylott planned killing his stepdaughters and Mary Maloney was devastated after hearing that her husband was leaving her while she was pregnant. She snapped and acted out of shock.
The victims in “The Speckled Band” are Helen Stoner and Julia Stoner. These two are typical villains. Julia died under suspicious circumstances. Both are young.
Helen has grey hair. She looks weary and haggard. The fear and stress makes her look older because Dr Watson observes;
“Figure were those of a
woman of 30”
This shows that she is young but looks older because of the stress she has been having and because her father has been abusing her.
Helen Stoner is very depressed and in fear of her life because she is afraid she might die like her sister did. She has;
“restless, frightened eyes.”
Helen is very frightened and she feels unsafe because she thinks she is going to die because her father moved her into the room where her sister, Julia, died. Before she died she had been hearing some noises and had been hearing these noises too. So she goes to seek help from Sherlock Holmes so he can get to the bottom of this mystery. She suspects her father has something to do with this that’s why she’s so scared. Helen Stoner is a typical victim because she is weak. But, the victim is quite different in “Lamb To The Slaughter” The victim Patrick Maloney was a tall police man. We know that he is tall because he took long strides when he walked. He is short tempered. He has a lack of respect for his wife and he becomes a victim because he is a villainous because Mary thought Patrick loved her but he didn’t, and when he told her that he was leaving he was being evil and she snapped and acted out of shock and that’s why he became a victim.
Patrick Maloney cares more about his job than his wife’s feelings because when he tells her his feelings he says;
“But there needn’t really be
any fuss. I hope
not anyway. It wouldn’t be
very good for my job.”
Patrick Maloney is an untypical victim.
Patrick pushed his wife to kill him if you think about it. After telling the bad news he said;
“‘For God sake’, he said, hearing her,
but not turning around. ‘Don’t make supper for
me. I’m going out”
Out of these stories I think Sherlock Holmes in “The Speckled Band” was the better detective than the policemen in “Lamb To The Slaughter” because Sherlock Holmes got to the bottom of the case and solved the crime. The villain was punished and in the other story things were different.
Sherlock Holmes is a typical detective. We have a stereotypical impression of his physical appearance. He is usually represented as fairly tall. His face has pointed features.
He always wears a check cloak and a matching hat (deerstalker) when he goes out on business, he smokes a pipe whenever he is thinking and he carries a magnifying glass.
Holmes has good observational skills. He knew from looking at Helen Stone how she traveled to reach him. He looked at her and saw mud marks on her coat and he knew that she traveled on a cart to get to him. He also saw half a train ticket in her hand. He also patronizes Watson;
No, but I fancy that I may have
deducted a little more”
This means that he is saying to Watson that he observed more than him.
He is calm in a crises because he knows that if he isn’t calm in a crisis he could ruin everything and someone’s life might be at risk.
He is a perfect gentleman and he wants to protect the victims. With Helen Stoner he is polite;
“Good morning, madam… I shall order you
a cup of hot coffee…
my dear madam”
Dr Watson says Sherlock Holmes works because he likes to fight evil and solve crimes not for the money. For example;
“Working as he did rather for the love
of his art that for the acquirement
of wealth”
In the story “Lamb To The Slaughter” the policemen aren’t as good at solving the crime as Sherlock Holmes.
They don’t have very good observational skills, they didn’t catch the criminal- Mary didn’t get arrested, they aren’t good at tracing clues-they thought that a guy hit Patrick with a club or a hammer. They are kind of stupid because they ate the evidence-the leg of lamb.
“Their mouths were full of meat”
They said that the evidence is probably right under their noses which made them look like fools.
Although, they aren’t that useless. They do search for clues, but they assume too many things such as;
“That’s a hell of a big club
the guy must’ve used”
They check out the alibi but they don’t question the grosser enough or else they don’t question Mary Maloney enough as they assume she is innocent. They assume that the murderer is a guy and the weapon used was a club. They don’t connect the club with frozen leg of lamb. They are too kind to Mary and they are easily fooled by fake emotions and pregnancy. Mary is well pleased that they believed her because she got away with killing Patrick.
The setting in “The Speckled Band” is a typical setting in this genre. The house is very old and only one wing is inhabited. The bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor. It is a large mansion.
“The building was grey, lichen-blocked stoned,
with a high central portion and two curving
wing, like, the claws of a crab”
In “Lamb To The Slaughter” the house was ordinary. It is well looked after, warm and cozy. It was a domestic setting.
“The room was warm and clean, the curtains
drawn, the two table lamps alight”
“The Speckled Band” setting is very typical in this genre and in “Lamb To The Slaughter” it is very untypical.
In “The Speckled Band” the atmosphere set is typical in genre. It is at night, the weather I windy and it is raining and it is cold. There is lots of tension, suspense and a sense of fear because it is really dark and it is late at night and there is danger because Dr Roylott has a cheetah and a baboon in his garden. There is a lot of tension and suspense when Sherlock Holmes and Watson are waiting in Julia’s room and the silence of the room is killing them. They know that their own lives are at danger because they don’t go to sleep. As Sherlock Holmes says to Dr Watson;
“Don’t go to sleep; your very life
may depend on it.”
This is Sherlock Holmes telling Watson not to go to sleep because if he does whatever killed Julia could kill them so this adds to the tension.
In “Lamb To The Slaughter”, at first Mary felt no tension or whatever she thought everything was all calm and relaxed. But Patrick didn’t feel that. He was distracted by what he had to tell her. He acts out of character.
The tension begins to creep in because of her husband actions. He had a really strong glass of whiskey to help him tell her that he was leaving her. He swallowed his drink and he didn’t eat anything. The way he talks to her with aggression tells us that there is something on his mind. The tension really comes in when he has to tell her something that she doesn’t want to hear. As he does so he;
“He kept his head down so that the light
from the lamp beside him fell across the upper part
of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow”
He is ashamed to tell her because he thinks that everyone would start saying that Patrick left Mary because she was pregnant and he couldn’t handle being a father.
In “The Speckled Band” the murder mystery was solved. Dr Roylott was killed by the snake and got what he deserved. They discovered what the crime was. The crime was Dr Roylott trained a snake to go up a pipe, through the ventilation, down the bell pull (which was fake) and to bite the person in the bed. Dr Roylott knew this plan would work
because he screwed the bed to the floor so nobody could move the bed. Then once the snake had bit the person in the bed, it would go back up the bell pull, through the ventilator and back to Dr Roylott. He would give the snake some milk as a reward and then he would put the snake back into the safe. They found out that Dr Roylott planned the murder. The reason why the story ended like this because in the time the story was written detective/murder stories had to have a definite ending otherwise there would have been an out cry.
In the ending of “Lamb To The Slaughter” Mary kills her husband and gets away with it. The police ate the evidence. Mary Maloney deliberately makes the policemen eat the evidence. The crime wasn’t solved. The story ended by Mary Maloney getting away with the murder and no body know how it happened or who killed Patrick. This has a comic and funny ending. The reason why this was ended the way it did is because it didn’t have to have a definite ending it is a humorous ending.
Even though these two stories are in the sane genre they are very different. I preferred reading “Lamb To The Slaughter” because it is different, funny and it kind of shows that being a woman isn’t just about looking pretty and there’s nothing like a woman’s revenge. I thought “The Speckled Band” was uninteresting and a bit too long.
