| "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" | |
|---|---|
| by Arthur Conan Doyle | |
| Released | 1892 |
| Series | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
| Client(s) | Miss Helen Stoner |
| Set in | 1883 |
"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the eighth of the twelve stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is one of four Sherlock Holmes stories that can be classified as a locked room mystery. The story was first published in Strand Magazine in February 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was published under the different title "The Spotted Band" in New York World in August 1905. Doyle later revealed that he thought this was his best Holmes story.[1]
Doyle wrote and produced a play based on the story. It premiered at the Adelphi Theatre, London on 4 June 1910, with H. A. Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes and Lyn Harding as Dr. Grimesby Roylott. The play, originally called The Stonor Case, differs from the story in several details, such as the names of some of the characters.[1]
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A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. One night, after conversing with her twin sister about her upcoming wedding day, Julia screamed and came to the hallway where Helen came out to see her, in Julia's dying words she said "it was the band, the speckled band!" Julia had been engaged to be married and, had she lived, would have received an annual ₤250 annuity from her late mother's income. Now Helen is engaged to be married. Holmes' investigation of the mother's estate reveals that its value has decreased significantly, and if both daughters had married, Dr. Roylott, Helen's ill-tempered and violent stepfather, would be left with very little, while the marriage of even one would be crippling. Therefore, the main suspicion falls on him.
Dr. Roylott has required Helen to move into a particular room of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. A number of details about the place are mysterious and disturbing. A low whistling sound is heard late at night, as well as a metallic clank. There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies, whom Dr. Roylott permits to live on the grounds—they wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott keeps exotic pets from India. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room.
After Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Dr. Roylott bends an iron poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again, thus showing that he is just as strong as the doctor.
Having arranged for Helen to spend the night somewhere else, Holmes and Watson sneak into her bedroom without Dr. Roylott's knowledge. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and this test of his theory turns out to be successful. They hear the whistle, and Holmes also sees what the bell cord is really for, although Watson does not. Julia's last words about a "speckled band" were in fact describing "a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India". The venomous snake had been sent to Julia's room by Dr. Roylott to murder her. After the swamp adder bit Julia, he called off the snake with the whistling, which made the snake climb up through the bell cord, disappearing from the scene.
Now the swamp adder is sent again through the ventilator by Dr. Roylott to kill Julia's sister Helen. Holmes attacks the snake, sending it back through an air ventilator connected to the next room. The aggravated snake bites Dr. Roylott instead, and, within seconds, he is dead. Holmes grimly notes that he is indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott's death, but that he is unlikely to feel much guilt over the death.
Richard Lancelyn Green, the editor of the 1998 Oxford paperback edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named "Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure" in Cassell's Saturday Journal, published in February 1891.[1] In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa to stay in a tumbledown cabin that belonged to a Portuguese trader. On the first night in the cabin, he is awoken by a creaking sound, and sees "a dark queer-looking thing hanging down through the ventilator above it". It turns out to be the largest Boa constrictor he has seen. He is paralysed with fear as the serpent comes down into the room. Unable to cry out for help, the captain spots an old bell that hung from a projecting beam above one of the windows. The bell cord had rotted away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm.
The name swamp adder is an invented one,[1] and the scientific treatises of Doyle's time do not mention any kind of adder of India.[2] To fans of Sherlock Holmes who enjoy treating the stories as altered accounts of real events, the true identity of this snake has been a puzzle since the publication of the story, even to professional herpetologists.[2] Many species of snakes have been proposed for it, and Richard Lancelyn Green concludes the Indian Cobra (Naja naja) is the snake which it most closely resembles, rather than Boa constrictor, which is not venomous.[1] The Indian cobra has black and white speckled marks, and is one of the most lethal of the Indian venomous snakes with a neurotoxin which will often kill in a few minutes. It is also a good climber and is used by snake charmers in India. However, snakes are deaf, therefore it would not be possible to signal a snake by whistling. Also, while snakes are capable of climbing solid objects, there is no way one could have climbed a cord.
In the Soviet dramatization of the story, the deafness inconsistency (while not the others) was solved by Dr. Roylott (suspecting the deafness of snakes) softly knocking on the wall in addition to whistling. While snakes are deaf, they are sensitive to vibration.
Bitis arietans from Africa, Russell's viper and saw-scaled viper also bear resemblance to the swamp adder of the story, but they have hemotoxin — slow working venoms.[1]
The herpetologist Laurence Monroe Klauber proposed, in a tongue-in-cheek article which blames Dr. Watson for getting the name of the snake wrong, a theory that the swamp adder was an artificial hybrid between the Mexican Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) and Naja naja.[2] His speculation suggests that Doyle might have hidden a double-meaning in Holmes' words. What Holmes said, reported by Watson, was "It is a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India"; but Klauber suggested what Holmes really said was "It is a samp-aderm, the deadliest skink in India." Samp-aderm can be translated "snake-Gila-monster"; Samp, Hindi for snake, and the suffix aderm is derived from heloderm, the common or vernacular name of the Gila monster generally used by European naturalists.[2] Skinks are lizards of the family Scincidae, many of which are snake-like in form. Such a hybrid reptile will have a venom incomparably strengthened by hybridization, assuring the almost instant demise of the victim. And it will also have ears like any lizard, so it could hear the whistle, and legs and claws allowing it to run up and down the bell cord with a swift ease.[2]
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself wrote a stage play based on The Speckled Band, which during 1910 ran for five months in a West End production, with H. A. Saintsbury as Holmes before the production moved to New York. There was a London revival of this play in 1921.[3]
The short story was earlier adapted for a 1923 film starring Eille Norwood as Holmes[4] and a 1931 film starring Raymond Massey as the detective. In 1958, Massey's daughter, Anna Massey, married another actor who famously played Holmes: Jeremy Brett.[5]
A half-hour television adaptation starring Alan Napier and Melville Cooper was broadcast in 1949.[6][7]
The pilot episode of the BBC's 1964-1965 series Sherlock Holmes was a new version of "The Speckled Band", airing in May 1964. It was written by Giles Cooper, directed by Robin Midgley, and starred Douglas Wilmer as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Watson.[8] "The Speckled Band" was the eighth episode of the first series of Holmes adaptations starring Jeremy Brett.[9] The 1944 film The Spider Woman is based on several Holmes stories, among them "The Speckled Band."
"The Speckled Band" was adapted as part of the anime series, Sherlock Hound. In this version, Moriarty poses as Roylott to steal Helen's money, and Hound gets involved when his motorcar breaks down and must stay at their home for the night.
The BBC series 'Sherlock' episode 'a Scandal in Belgravia' made reference to the book with a case, briefly seen, but later mentioned as 'the Speckled Blonde' as the murder victim was a blonde woman whose corpse was observed to have numerous punctures which Watson describes as speckles.
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