The Adventure of the Speckled Band and Other Stories of Sherl... by Arthur Conan Doyle

Grimesby Roylott-bespeaks the oppressive authority typical of the era of late Victorian patriarchy. Musing upon her tale, Holmes and Watson are suddenly interrupted by her father, whose very name-Dr. The circumstances that surrounded her sister's death are recurring, and as the story begins, Miss Stoner is in fear for her own life. There are also a cheetah and baboon at large on the grounds, strange whistling sounds in the night, and other unusual noises, including the clang of metal falling. The observation that their headgear is made of spotted handkerchiefs provides a visual suggestion of their threat. Watson in their rooms in Baker Street, Helen Stoner inclines to the view that a band of gypsies camped on their father's estate may have been responsible. The title alludes to the dying exclamation of Miss Julia Stoner to her sister: 'It was the band! The speckled band!' Recounting the events surrounding her sister's mysterious death to Holmes and his friend and chronicler Dr. That they take place during the course of a single day and night gives an impression of the gathering tension the story generates and for which it is memorable. Scholars consider that the events of the story took place on 4 April 1883. 'The Speckled Band' comes from the earliest volume of collected short stories, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in 1892. The stories, which were written for Strand Magazine, were carefully structured to appeal to an increasingly enthusiastic public, and they developed a predictable formula upon which individual adventures worked variations. In 'The Speckled Band' the scenes are instantly familiar to anyone who knows the Sherlock Holmes canon, but they are also superbly evocative to anyone coming to the stories fresh. Holmes's famous ingenuity of observation is secondary, however, to the postures struck in the various set scenes in each story. The slightly overinflated and unsteady magniloquence of Doyle's prose counterpoints the restraint and precision of Holmes himself.

They are incipient 'ripping yarns,' Victorian-Edwardian melodrama, but Holmes himself maintains the authority of the calculus and the elemental table, the abstract mathematical exactness of algebra and logarithms.

The power of imminent suggestion does attach to the Sherlock Holmes stories. 'The Speckled Band' reminded me of India. It was its author's personal choice, coming at the top of a list of 12 as 'the grim snake story,' 'an echo of which' Doyle said could be found 'in all parts of the world.' As if to confirm this, one of the characters in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet (1975) remembers that it was her favorite as a child: 'I used to read it by torchlight under the bedclothes at the school Sarah and I went to at home.

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are perennially popular, and 'The Speckled Band' is among the best.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band and Other Stories of Sherl... by Arthur Conan Doyle