The Speckled Band
The Speckled Band or The Adventure of the Speckled Band is a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that first appeared in Strand Magazine in February 1892 and was illustrated by Sidney Paget . The story was in October 1892 with eleven other stories in the anthology The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ( dt. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes added) and in August 1905 again under the title The Spotted band in the New York World published. German translations have been published under different titles such as Das spleckte Band or Das tupfte Band .
This story by Doyle with the detective character Sherlock Holmes as the main character is about solving a mysterious death and preventing a feared assassination attempt on the twin sister of the victim.
action
In April 1883, Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson was visited by a certain Helen Stoner one morning in their shared apartment at 221b Baker Street, who asked Holmes for advice and assistance. Since her mother's death eight years ago, Helen Stoner has lived with her stepfather, Dr. Roylott, who used to work as a doctor in India for a long time. After a lengthy prison sentence for manslaughter in affect due to theft in his home, he returned to England, where he has led an exotic life ever since. From the neighbors, Dr. Roylott, who is considered contentious and irascible, completely isolated; he only maintains friendly relations with wandering gypsies, smokes strong Indian cigars and keeps a hunting leopard and a baboon on his property, which, to the horror of the villagers, he lets roam freely on the property. He earns his living from a fortune that Helen's mother left him on the condition that her daughters receive a larger sum of money every year after their marriage.
Helen's twin sister Julia died shortly before her planned wedding to a naval officer two years earlier on a stormy night. Immediately before her death, she had told Helen about a mysterious whistle that she could hear in her room at night. Helen also believes that at the time of Juliet's death she heard a soft whistle and a metallic noise in her sister's room. Julia's last broken words about " The Speckled Band" together with a sign in the direction of her stepfather's bedroom remained ambiguous and incomprehensible; a closer examination of the mysterious circumstances of death by the forensic doctor did not lead to any result. The room in which Julia stayed before her death was tightly locked and inaccessible from the outside; Julia was obviously alone in her room before her death; there were also no indications of an external use of force or external influence.
Helen now also intends to get married shortly. Under the pretext that repair work was necessary in her room, she has meanwhile been moved by her stepfather to the former room of her twin sister and is frightened there at night by the same whistling. She suspects a connection between the noise and Juliet's death and now fears for her own life. For this reason she seeks out Holmes, who promises to help her.
Shortly after Helen's visit, Dr. Roylott visits Holmes unannounced to find out what his stepdaughter is up to. With massive threats and intimidation he tries to dissuade Holmes from getting involved in the matter and making further inquiries. However, he is not impressed by Roylott's appearance and decides to go out with his friend Dr. Watson to inspect Roylott's property while he was away.
Before that, Holmes took a look at the will of Helen's mother in the court register and found that the assets left behind had lost a lot of value since her death. The annual payment of a larger sum of money to the daughters in the event of their marriage, as stipulated in the will, would therefore mean a significant financial loss for Roylott and endanger his livelihood. This increases suspicions against Roylott, who, however, had not raised any objections to a marriage himself.
During the subsequent tour of Roylott's residence, Holmes finds a number of strange clues. For example, between Julia's former bedroom and Dr. Roylott's room has an air hole with a fan, although the room can easily be ventilated from the outside. A mock-up of a doorbell without a bell is attached to the vent, the cord of which hangs down on Julia's bed. The bed is also bolted to the floor for no apparent reason. The changes in the sisters' bedroom, such as the dummy bell and the air vent, were also installed afterwards without Julia or Helen being asked beforehand.
In Dr. Roylott's room notices Holmes a saucer with milk on a cupboard; however, there is no house cat in the apartment for which the milk could have been provided. He also discovers a cage, the contents of which are not examined further.
Holmes already seems to have an explanation for the mysterious connections and asks Helen to spend the following night in her old bedroom without Roylott knowing. He and Dr. Meanwhile, Watson want to keep watch secretly in Julia's room. Around three o'clock in the morning, the two heard a soft hissing sound and a bright whistle. Holmes knocks on the doorbell; a short time later, Dr. Roylott gave a deafening scream on the other side of the fan in his room.
Holmes goes with Dr. Watson in Roylott's room. There they find Roylott dead. As Holmes Dr. Watson explains, he was bitten by an extremely venomous Indian swamp snake, which he trained with milk and pipes to crawl through the fan onto the bell pull and from there onto Helen's bed. With Julia his murderous plan was successful; when he wanted to kill Helen in the same way, the venomous snake itself, which had been irritated by Holmes' blows on the bell, was his undoing.
During the return trip to London, Holmes recapitulates and analyzes the context of the case in detail.
Interpretative approach
At the beginning of The Speckled Band , as in numerous other stories, Holmes provides a sample of his outstanding, almost superhuman intellectual abilities as well as his ingenious powers of imagination. If he shows Watson elsewhere, to his amazement, that he can apparently read minds, he is putting himself in the right light here with his client, in that he succeeds in developing the means of transport used by the visitor on her trip to London on the basis of clues . This form of exposure acts as a kind of curtain raiser and gets not only the client in the mood, but also the reader for the expected extraordinary.
At the same time, Holmes is identified with few characteristic features in the opening scene. He loves to sleep late in the morning without this being to be understood negatively. Despite his existing self-confidence, he shows a rather modest reluctance with regard to his professional successes. As a member of the academic professional group of professional people , he is largely financially independent and, in accordance with the code of conduct of his social class, shows himself to be a gentleman who not only offers his services for remuneration, but also makes them available unselfishly. So he is ready without hesitation to help the currently penniless Helen Stoner (“I have no money now ...”) if necessary, even without payment or reward, and emphasizes expressly: “I want to reassure you about the money question, I find my reward only in my own work ”. However, in the afterthought he limits this selflessness in the event that his client should have appropriate financial resources in the future (“but you are free to reimburse me for any expenses I may have incurred”).
In contrast to other stories in which Holmes behaves repulsively or not very empathically towards women and sometimes speaks about them in such a misogynous way that even his friend Watson takes offense and expresses cautious criticism, Holmes shows himself in The Speckled Band of the female Protagonist extremely courteous and helpful.
The happenings and events in The Speckled Band are portrayed from Watson's limited perspective, as in most of the Holmes stories. As a friend and admirer of the detective, he can report the external course of events in the investigation process, but does not have the same detailed observations and information as Holmes and is therefore always inferior to him in his conclusions. Watson acts as an intermediary between the extremely astute, well-informed detective and the uninitiated reader; From his own limited point of view, he can also praise the outstanding analytical skills of Holmes as a loyal companion and thus upgrade the status of the detective as an outstanding investigator without giving the impression of inappropriate adulation. The reader is also made to feel superior to Watson, who can see, but cannot observe precisely and draw analytical conclusions. In this way, the reader is at the same time suggested to be able to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding the case through their own perceptions or considerations and to be able to participate in the solution of the riddle himself.
As a character in the narrative, Watson also takes on another function: he induces his friend to express himself and thus helps to create dialogical situations that make Holmes' long or boring monologues superfluous. The distance between Watson and Holmes is strictly observed until the end. Although Holmes asks questions and makes mysterious hints, he doesn't really trust Watson at any point until the case is finally resolved. For example, he asks his friend to take a revolver with him, indicating the dangerousness of the situation, but does not explain the background or circumstances surrounding the puzzling case and his own investigative work. If he points out significant connections and apparently draws the attention to important information, this serves less for clarification than for further enigma and mystification: “It is at least a strange coincidence that the girl who sleeps in his bed , dies suddenly, just after an air hole has been made over it and a bell cord has been attached next to it. Doesn't that strike you too? ”Compared to Watson, Holmes has a considerable informational advantage, which he does not reveal until the final resolution. The lack of fair play against Watson in this respect is one of the most important means of creating tension in the narrative. Since Watson is not initiated into Holmes' actual train of thought, with his limited knowledge as a narrator he can continue to draw the reader's attention to misleading sidelines or blind motives that do not lead to the solution of the case. This is how Dr. Roylott in The Speckled Band discovered a dangerous leopard and a baboon that roam freely in the park of the estate. For inexplicable reasons, he also has very close and friendly relations with gypsies, with whom he temporarily roams and whom he allows to camp on his property.
These motives have no relation to the resolution of the case, but encourage the reader to suspect a connection to the crime. However, such motifs not only serve as red herrings to distract the reader, but are also functional for characterizing Roylott and creating an eerie mood and atmosphere that is further intensified by the decay of the castle and its immediate surroundings.
As Holmes' antagonist , Dr. Grimesby Roylott was introduced as the detective himself in a curtain raiser in the opening part of the story . Without an invitation or registration, he suddenly appears in the two friends' apartment on Baker Street; his impetuous penetration, harsh demeanor and grim external appearance let his malevolent nature emerge from the beginning and hope for nothing good:
"All of a sudden [...] the door to the room was thrown open, and a huge male figure in a strange, half-learned, half-peasant appearance had planted itself in its frame. The intruder wore a tall black hat and skirt with long laps, with gauntlets and a riding whip in his hands. It was so big that it literally struck the top of the door beam, and so large that it seemed to fill the opening completely. All bad passions were reflected on his broad, sunburned face, covered with innumerable wrinkles. He turned his gaze now to me, now to my friend, and his deep-set, yellow-tipped eyes and protruding, narrow, fleshless nose gave him the look of a grim old bird of prey. "
However, the particular danger emanating from Holmes' opponent must still be clearly demonstrated to the reader. This happens through a simple self-characterization by Roylott: "I am a dangerous man to fall foul of" (in the German translation: "I don't advise anyone to get in my way"). In order to emphasize his statement, he grabs a poker with his “mighty brown hands”, bends it and tosses it into the fireplace.
Then he leaves the apartment loudly with another threat ("" Make sure you don't get my hands on it! "") And Holmes is given the opportunity to counter-appear: "" I'm not quite as squat as him, but if he had stayed a moment I would have been able to show him that my fingers don't give in much to his in terms of strength. ”“ He takes the steel poker and straightens it with a jerk. This makes it clear to the reader from the outset that two equal opponents meet here. Of course, the reader's sympathies are with the detective; Roylott had already made himself suspicious of his penchant for the exotic and the associated turning away from the natural English way of life, the ordo naturalis , and his dealings with the less respectable gypsies. After his initial appearance, Roylott acts unobserved in the background as the story progresses.
The action space in the story is clearly structured; the events take place successively in three different locations. As in almost all Sherlock Holmes stories, the opening scene takes place in the detective's London apartment on Baker Street, which Holmes and Watson share at the time. In the middle part of the story, the scene changes to the castle-like property of Dr. Roylotts in Surrey , where the crime scene is inspected and the case eventually resolved. The final part of the story shows Holmes and Watson on their way back to London.
The entire plot spanned a period of 48 hours in April 1883, starting with the client's visit in the early morning at 7.15 a.m. to the climax and dénouement shortly after 3 a.m. The narrative ends with Holmes' reconstruction and final analysis of the case on the way home the day after the official investigation into Roylott's death by the authorities.
The opening credits are presented in the opening scene of the story by Helen Stoner through her report. She suspects that Dr. Roylott killed her twin sister Julia out of sheer greed and sees her own life threatened. Her account consists of three parts, a general description of life on the Roylotts' estate, a description of her stepfather and a description of the unfathomable events in connection with Juliet's death. Her report is clearly structured and logically structured, from the beginning of the narrative process to the reproduction of the enigmatic hint of her dying sister, although she is unable to correctly assess the meaning of the clues herself.
After Helen Stoner's report is completed, the focus of the narrative changes; the client is no longer the focus of interest and the focus shifts to Holmes, who - as the reader can now expect - will solve the case. The further action is single-stranded and goal-oriented; Holmes does not limit himself to solving the case through pure deliberation while sitting in an armchair, but is quite ready to engage in a dangerous confrontation with his malicious opponent. For him, a possible personal risk does not play a role; however, he is concerned about his friend Dr. Watson and thus heightened the tension: “You know, Watson, [...] I'm really not very comfortable about having to take you with me tonight. The matter is by no means without serious danger. "
The course of action in The Speckled Band follows a phase scheme that is typical for the majority of the Holmes stories. After visiting the client and performing the pre-historic story, Holmes develops a plan. The suspect Dr. Roylott enters and Holmes discovers the motive for the murder. The crime scene is then inspected, with Holmes discovering further revealing clues. Then Holmes sets a trap for the murderer; the evidence is checked, the perpetrator is exposed and rendered harmless. Holmes recapitulates the case in a touching retrospective and explains to Watson the circumstantial evidence and circumstances that had been puzzling up to that point. The structure of this detective story is characterized in a way characteristic of Doyle by a regular alternation of action and reflection. The tension curve rises continuously until the murder attempt; Numerous false leads also contribute to this, which lead the reader astray. Tension is also created by the eerie and menacing figure of Dr. Roylott, who with his uninhibited brutality and his exotic extravagances remains atmospherically effective even without further appearances.
In Holmes retrospect and explanation at the end, the various indications are placed in a row and related to one another; The elements that are initially unconnected and apparently cannot be related to one another finally fit into one another like the individual parts of a puzzle game and result in a coherent overall picture or mosaic.
The astonishing resolution in the final part also shows that The Speckled Band, like most classic detective stories, was constructed backwards and written from back to front. The reader is at the end given the opportunity to participate in the detective's conclusions and his process of ratiocination ; the backward-looking analysis of the causal chain makes the perpetrator rationally inferred. With the solution of the case, further evil can also be averted; Law and order will be restored and in the end justice will triumph.
Interestingly, however, Holmes in The Speckled Band is not interested in informing the police or official bodies about the actual facts and true backgrounds of the horrific events. So he doesn't even make any suggestion to the official authorities that Dr. Roylott committed one murder and planned another. The official investigation therefore only states that Dr. Roylott was careless in handling a dangerous pet and was killed in the process. Holmes is not on the side of the representatives of the state; he is interested in crime not as a moral problem, but primarily as a brain teaser and stimulant for his intellect. It acts as a catalyst for a process of logical deduction, which in turn ultimately ensures the rational order of the world in a way that is reassuring for the reader.
For the majority of readers, it is probably irrelevant that there are no snakes that can crawl up and down on the pull of the bell, and that there is no species of snake that has the properties that history ascribed to the Indian swamp snake. Doyle may even have deliberately placed these inconsistencies in his narrative in order to challenge his readers in a certain way.
Impact history
The actual crime scene in The Speckled Band is a locked room inaccessible from the outside. This locked room has been a classic element of detective history since Edgar Allan Poe's tale Murders in the Rue Morgue , which Doyle takes up here. However, Helen Stoner's report indicates at the outset that the room cannot be completely hermetically sealed. As she casually mentions, the smoke from Roylott's strong Indian cigars could be smelled in Julia's bedroom despite the doors and windows being locked. So Holmes knew from the start that he would find an air shaft in the connecting wall.
Doyle orients himself with the backward-looking structure of the narrative in The Speckled Band on his declared role model Edgar Allan Poe. In his essay The Philosophy of Composition , Poe advises such a compositional principle for a demanding story with an architecturally determined plot , especially in a detective story. According to Poe, the dénouement must first be present; the whole story is then constructed backwards from the solution and written down in reverse.
In May 1910, Doyle wrote a stage version of The Speckled Band under the alternative title The Stoner Case in just one week , which was based on the short story in a rather loose form. In the implementation for the theater, Doyle expanded the plot and introduced more characters. Doyle had rented the Adelphi Theater in London for six months from February 1910 for a performance of his play The House of Temperley . However, the production had only moderate success and was financially lossy for Doyle. The death of Edward VII on May 6, 1910 and the closure of the London theaters until early June as a sign of sadness and respect meant the end of Temberley . With Doyle contracted to the Adelphi Theater until the end of the season, he needed a new play to make up for the financial losses. Doyle's stage version of The Speckled Band premiered on June 4, 1910 and ran very successfully until the end of the season at the Adelphi Theater, from August 1910 at the Globe Theater. From November 21, 1910, the play was also performed for a short time in New York's Garrick Theater; it was performed again in 1911 and 1921.
Film adaptations (selection)
The short story provided the template for numerous film adaptations:
- In 1912 a film adaptation of the story was released under the title Le ruban moucheté as a French silent film with Georges Tréville as Holmes.
- In 1923 a film adaptation of the case was made within a film series with Eille Norwood as Holmes.
- In 1931, a 90-minute film adaptation of the story with Raymond Massey as a detective was produced.
- In 1949 it was adapted as a 27-minute television episode starring Alan Napier as Sherlock Holmes.
- In 1964, the case was filmed as a 50-minute pilot for the English TV series Sherlock Holmes with Douglas Wilmer as Holmes.
- In 1967, a 60-minute German film adaptation followed under the title Das gefleckte Band as the first episode of a Sherlock Holmes television series by WDR with Erich Schellow as Sherlock Holmes, Paul Edwin Roth as Dr. Watson and Astrid Frank as Helen Stoner.
- In 1980, the second 25-minute episode of the first season of the series Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson , a Polish-British coproduction, worked heavily on the narrative.
- In 1984 the case was broadcast as the sixth 52-minute episode with Jeremy Brett as Holmes within the English television series The Adventures of des Sherlock Holmes . (6th episode of the 1st season)
Settings (selection)
In the English-speaking world, WorldCat's bibliographic database at the beginning of 2015 contained over ninety different audio versions of the story.
The Speckled Band has also been broadcast on English and American radio, for example
- on CBS as an hour-long episode of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater series on June 28, 1977 and
- on BBC Radio 4 as an episode of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series on August 29, 2008.
Several radio versions were also produced in German-speaking countries:
- as a radio play by Bayerischer Rundfunk , with Peter Pasetti and Klaus Behrend
- as a radio play by Saarländischer Rundfunk , with Alexander Kerst and Heinz Leo Fischer
- as a radio play by ORF , with Kurt Sterneck and Harald Harth
- as a radio play by Südwestfunk , with Walter Renneisen and Peter Fitz.
Numerous German versions were also published as a radio play or audio book, for example
- 2004 as an audio book by Aragon Verlag, with Daniel Morgenroth
- 2005 as a radio play by Titania Medien, with Joachim Tennstedt and Detlef Bierstedt
- 2006 as an audio book in the box The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Radioropa , read by Christian Poewe
- 2007 as an audio book by Diogenes Verlag , read by Claus Biederstaedt
- 2009 as a radio play by Maritim , with Christian Rode and Peter Groeger
- 2012 as an audio book by Random House Audio , read by Bert Cöll
- 2012 as an audio book by Der Hörverlag , read by Oliver Kalkofe
- 2013 as an audio book in the Audible collection , read by Erich Räuker
- 2014 as an audio book by Ohrka, read by Oliver Rohrbeck .
Secondary literature
Karl Heinz Göller : Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story . August Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-513-02222-0 , pp. 70-79.
Web links
- The Adventure of the Speckled Band . Original English text on: Project Gutenberg .
- The spotted tape . German translation to: Project Gutenberg-DE .
- Arthur Conan Doyle: The Speckled Band - A Sherlock Holmes Drama . Original English text of the 1910 stage version on: freeread.com .
Individual evidence
- ^ Translations into German also appeared under the title The story with the speckled band . See the mottled ribbon . On: Sherlock Holmes Wiki . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 72.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 72f.
- ↑ See also Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 73f.
- ↑ See also Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 74.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 74f.
- ↑ See also Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 75f.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 76.
- ↑ See also Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band. In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 76.
- ↑ See also Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band. In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 76f.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 77f.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 78f.
- ↑ See Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , p. 77.
- ↑ See more detailed Karl Heinz Göller: Doyle · The Speckled Band . In: Karl Heinz Göller and Gerhard Hoffmann (eds.): The English short story , pp. 70 and 77f.
- ↑ See the introduction by Paul Stuart Hayes to the edition of The Theatrical Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with William Gillette , Hidden Tiger Books 2012, ISBN 978-1-291-26421-0 , pp. 9f., Online [1 ] , accessed February 25, 2015.
- ↑ See the information in the Internet Movie Database The Speckled Band . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- ↑ See [2] . Retrieved February 17, 2017.
- ↑ CBS Radio Mystery Theater 1977-1978 . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- ↑ The Speckled Band, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Episode 8 of 12 . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- ↑ See the information on Sherlock Holmes wikia The speckled band . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
- ↑ Cf. the information in the catalog of the German National Library The flecked tape and on Sherlock Holmes wikia The flecked tape . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
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