The Adventure of the Speckled Band Summary & Analysis

“The Adventure of the Speckled Band” begins with Watson, the story’s narrator, noting that, of the nearly seventy cases that he and Sherlock Holmes have embarked on together as a detective duo, the one that he is about to narrate is among the most unusual. Watson also notes that Holmes only takes cases that are out of the ordinary, as he is a detective “for the love of his art” not as a means to get rich.

Watson says that he would have told these events sooner, but he was sworn to secrecy by a lady, whose untimely death has allowed him to tell the tale. As the cause of Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death has long been gossiped about, Watson seeks to set the record straight in his narrative.

The events that Watson recounts start early one morning in April of 1883, when he and Holmes were living as roommates in an apartment on Baker Street in London. Watson wakes up to find Holmes, normally a late riser, standing over him to let him know that they have a distressed young lady waiting for them in their sitting room.

Holmes notes that young women would only be wandering the streets of London at such an hour if there were a pressing need, so her case must be important. As Watson loves nothing more than watching Holmes use his exceptional deductive skills, he is excited to embark on a new adventure.

A few moments later, they head down to the sitting-room, where a young woman, clad in black and wearing a veil, is sitting near the window. Holmes notes that the woman is shivering, and he says she should sit next to the fire and drink a cup of hot coffee. The woman says that a sense of terror, not cold, is causing her to shiver. She lifts her veil to reveal a pale face and a frightened look in her eyes. The woman looks to be around thirty and has prematurely grey hair.

Holmes makes the quick observation that she must have started her travels early that morning (he notices half of a train ticket in her hand and sees splatters of mud, indicating that she traveled partially by dog-cart), and the woman introduces herself as Helen Stoner.

Helen tells Holmes that he was recommended by an acquaintance who had used the detective’s services for an earlier case. Helen also says that she is unable to afford a payment at the moment, but will be married in a month and can pay Holmes then. The detective says that his “profession is its own reward,” and money isn’t an issue for him.

Helen then recounts the incidents that led her to seek Holmes’s help. She lives with her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, the sole remaining descendent of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, one of the oldest Saxon families in England. The Roylotts were once among the richest families in the country, but their fortunes have slowly been reduced to nearly nothing after generations of wasteful habits.

Realizing that he needed a career, a young Roylott earned a medical degree and moved to India to set up a medical practice. While there, he married Mrs. Stoner, the widow of a major in the Bengal Army with two twin daughters. Roylott, provoked by a robbery in his house, beat his butler to death and somehow managed to escape a capital sentence. With his new family, he returned to England in disgrace.

Not long after, Helen’s mother died in a train accident, leaving a sizable inheritance to Roylott, with a stipulation that should Helen or her twin sister Julia get married, they would receive an annual income from it.

Roylott attempted to start a medical practice in London but gave up after some time and moved back, along with Helen and Julia, to the decaying Stoke Moran Manor.

Rather than integrating into the surrounding rural community of Surrey, who were excited to have someone from the distinguished family living in the manor again, Roylott became reclusive and got furiously angry with anyone who crossed his path. This temper, Helen believes, was aggravated by living for years in India.

Helen tells Holmes and Watson that Roylott has no friends aside from the group of wandering gypsies who have set up a camp on the Stoke Moran property. In exchange for letting them have tents on the manor’s grounds, they let Roylott stay with them for weeks at a time. She also says that her stepfather has a passion for Indian animals, keeping a cheetah and a baboon as pets that he allows to wander around the property.

Two years ago, Helen tells Holmes and Watson, her sister got engaged. Roylott had no objection to the marriage, but Julia died under mysterious circumstances shortly before her set wedding date.

Helen then tells the detectives about the incidents leading up to Julia’s strange death. She describes the layout of the building: Roylott, Julia, and Helen all lived in adjacent bedrooms in the only inhabited portion of the manor. “There is no communication between [the rooms],” Helen says, “but they all open into the same corridor.” In this arrangement, Julia and Roylott shared a wall.

One night, disturbed by the smell of Roylott’s Indian cigar smoke in her room, Julia went to Helen’s room to chat about her approaching wedding. As she left, Julia asked if Helen had ever heard a low whistling sound in the middle of the night. Helen had not, and she wondered if it came from the gypsy camp.

Helen and Julia always locked themselves in at night, and the sisters’ bedroom windows, which open to the lawn outside, were always shuttered to keep out the wandering animals.

One night shortly before Julia’s wedding, Helen heard a scream coming from her sister’s bedroom. As she entered the corridor, Helen seemed to hear the low whistling sound and a clanging of metal. She ran over to see what happened and Julia, in a state of shock, fell to the ground and started shaking in her sister’s arm. During her final convulsions, Julia said, “It was the band! The speckled band!” and then died. Helen tells Holmes and Watson that she saw a charred match and a match box in her sister’s hand, indicating that she had looked around right before she collapsed.

With no markings on her body, and the fact that the windows and door were locked up, Julia’s death is a mystery to Helen. She tells Holmes that she assumed the “speckled band” had something to do with the band of gypsies on the property, who sometimes wear spotted handkerchiefs over their heads.

By the time she comes to visit Holmes and Watson, Helen herself has become engaged. Soon after she made the announcement to Roylott, renovations began on the exterior wall next to her bedroom, so she was made to move into her sister’s former room.

Not long after switching rooms, Helen began to hear the same low whistling sound that Julia had described. Thoroughly disturbed, she decided to make the long trek to London to see how Holmes could help her.

Holmes notices that Helen has five bruised marks on her wrist, which she says came from Roylott. She brushes this off, suggesting that her stepfather is merely unaware of his strength, but Holmes stares pensively into the fire. Holmes and Watson make plans to meet Helen at the Stoke Moran Manor later that day so they can begin investigating the death.

Not long after Helen leaves their apartment, a large man with a threatening demeanor enters the room. He announces himself as Dr. Roylott, Helen’s stepfather. He tells Holmes and Watson that he’s been tracing Helen’s movements, knows that she has just paid them a visit, and demands to know what she told them. When Holmes refuses to say anything, Roylott tells them not to meddle in his affairs. He then grabs a fire poker, bends it as show of his strength, and leaves the room. Holmes then remarks that he himself is stronger than he looks and he bends the poker back into shape.

Before leaving, Holmes runs errands and makes some calculations about the state of the inheritance that Mrs. Stoner left to Roylott. Taking into account falling agricultural prices, the remaining funds were rather low and the marriage of either daughter would likely cripple Roylott’s finances.

Holmes and Watson begin their journey from London to Surrey, first by train and then by dog-cart. They cross paths with Helen and tell her that Roylott had been following her, which causes her some alarm.

Holmes and Watson then begin to inspect the manor with Helen’s help. Watson notes how the building is in a state of great decline, yet the scaffolding for the repairs outside of Helen’s room seems inessential.

The detectives inspect the bedrooms from the outside and determine that the shutters are essentially impenetrable. Inside the manor, they go to Julia’s former room, where Holmes examines every surface and notices that the bed is bolted to the floor and that a ventilator hole goes from that room into Roylott’s bedroom next door.

Holmes also remarks on the strangeness of the bell-pull, supposedly installed to call the housekeeper upstairs, though the sisters never used the bell-pull because they never had a need for a housekeeper’s help. Holmes tests it and determines that it’s a fake, merely hanging onto a hook in the ceiling. Both the bell-pull and the ventilator were recently installed, Helen tells them. They then go into Roylott’s room, where Holmes notices a safe with a saucer of milk sitting on top of it and a leash tied and looped like a whipcord.

Back outside, the three hatch a plan for the evening. Holmes and Watson will take a room on the second floor of the inn across the lane from the manor. Helen will tell her stepfather that she will be confining herself to her room due a headache. Then, when she hears that Roylott has gone to bed, she will undo the shutters, put a lamp in the window indicating that all is quiet in the house, and retreat into her former room. Holmes and Watson then go back to the inn and wait.

At the inn, the detectives wait for night to fall. From their window, they see Roylott pull up to the manor and yell at the boy driving him, who is unable to open the heavy gates. Holmes and Watson discuss the clues they saw that day, as well as how to proceed when they enter the mansion later.

At eleven, Holmes and Watson see from their room at the inn that Helen has lit the lamp in her room, their signal to enter the manor. They set out into the night and, when they nearly reach the rooms, they see the outline of the baboon scurrying in front of them. Once the animal passes by, they slip off their shoes, secretly enter Julia’s former bedroom and close the windows.

Holmes instructs Watson to sit silently in the dark and not fall asleep. With a cane in his hands, Holmes sits on one side of the bed and Watson, with his pistol on a table, sits nearby. Through the window, they hear the whine of the cheetah outside.

After waiting for hours, the detectives suddenly see a light coming from the ventilator and they smell oil, telling them that Roylott is stirring about next door. Holmes and Watson continue to sit in silence until they hear a hiss come into their room. Suddenly, Holmes gets up and begins to furiously beat at the bell-pull.

Right when Watson lights a lantern in the room, he hears the low whistling sound. The glare of the light makes it so he can’t see what Holmes had been beating at with his cane, but the detective’s face has paled and a taken on a look of terror. Moments later they hear a long and horribly loud scream come from Roylott’s room.

Once the screams fade down, they investigate Roylott’s room and see the doctor sitting on a chair wearing a long dressing gown and slippers with the looped leash in his lap and a snake curled tightly around his head. Holmes immediately remarks on the speckled bands around the snake’s skin and identifies it as a swamp adder, “the deadliest snake in India.” He notes that Roylott had likely died instantly from the snake’s bite. Holmes takes the leash from Roylott’s lap and places the snake back into the safe.

Thus ends the investigation. Watson quickly summarizes for the reader how they conveyed the news to Helen, who then moves in with her aunt. A slow official inquiry gets underway. The story closes with Holmes telling Watson what he took away from the investigation, namely how important it is to have sufficient data. Julia mentioning the “speckled band” to Helen made her confuse the word “band” meaning “stripe” with “band” meaning “group,” thus putting Holmes onto the wrong scent and thinking the groups of gypsies had something to do with Julia’s death. Only by examining the physical clues directly in front of him—the bell-pull, the bolted bed and the ventilator hole—could he deduce the method of the crime.

At the conclusion of the story, Holmes tells Watson that he knows he is at least partly responsible for Roylott’s death, but that the guilt of this evil man dying will not weigh on him very heavily.