arthur conan doyle the adventure of the speckled band

After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again. Roylott bends an iron fireplace poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he attempts to make small talk during the encounter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. Roylott keeps exotic pets from India.Īfter Helen leaves, Dr. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott has rented spare rooms in Stoke Moran near them.

Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies who wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks, in order to bring in a bit of cash. In addition, Helen's bed is clamped to the floor this piece of furniture can never be moved from its position.

The rope goes to a ventilator-an opening high in the wall of the room, close to the ceiling-which provides air circulation between Helen's room and an adjacent room of Dr Roylott in the crumbling mansion. There is a strange bell cord over the bed but it does not appear to work any bell. Late at night, Helen hears low whistling sounds followed by a metallic clang. Helen is reluctant to sleep in the room because a number of things about the bedroom are mysterious and disturbing. This room was the one in which two years before, Helen's twin sister Julia had died under mysterious and dramatic circumstances-uttering the last words 'The band! The speckled band!'-just prior to her wedding. Roylott has required Miss Stoner, who is engaged to be married, to move into a particular bedroom of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home in Stoke Moran. The doctor becomes notorious for terrorizing the local village because of his quarrelsome personality and violent temper. After returning from India where he had a large medical practice and had served a jail sentence for killing his native Butler in a fit of rage, Roylott-a widower-settles with his two stepdaughters in the broken-down ancestral manor-all that is left of estates that had extended into Berkshire and Hampshire. Dr Roylott is the last survivor of what was a wealthy but dissolute and violent tempered aristocratic Anglo-Saxon family of Surrey.

Another magnificent story with a very elaborated plot: Holmes' client is Helen Stoner, a 32 year old spinster who lives with her stepfather: Dr.

Arthur conan doyle the adventure of the speckled band