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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Speckled Band

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Full of mystery and with an unexpected endpoint, “The Speckled Band,” one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, narrates the tale of how Sherlock and his friend Dr. Watson embark on an adventure with the purpose of solving the mystery of Julia Stoner’s death. One morning Helen Stoner, who is described as a “woman of thirty with premature grey hair”, finds herself desperately seeking the help of Sherlock Holmes. She starts by explaining him her back-story of how her mother had married Dr. Grimesby Roylott (her stepfather) during his practice in India. Her mother bequeathed her wealth to Roylott under the condition of paying her two daughters an annual sum when they became married.
After her mother’s death, Helen, her sister, …show more content…

As he sat on a chair in the corner of the room, inspecting it, he notices a thick bell-rope which hung down beside the bed. This discovery leads to the finding of the other odd clues in Julia’s room as well as Dr. Roylott’s room. The dummy belt rope, non-working ventilator, the saucer of milk, the dog leash, and the fact that Julia’s bed was clamped to the floor served as clear evidence, disproving Sherlock’s first argument, and supporting his final argument. The concluding phase of the story where Sherlock and Watson witness the trained snake sliding through the ventilator to translate itself to Julia’s room and unsuccessfully attacking the intended victims, and instead, kills its owner (Dr. Roylott) illustrates and proves Sherlock’s final argument. Helped by peripheral trace data and local resources such as the fact that Dr. Roylott sneaking his snake through the ventilator is what caused the sound of the metallic clang heard by Helen the night of Julia’s death. Sherlock confirming that indeed Dr. Roylott would lose part of his inherited money when his stepdaughters became married and so with the purpose of impeding their marriage he trained an Indian swamp adder (the speckled band) to kill both sisters is one crucial piece of peripheral trace date support that helped answer the enigmatic question of “What explains Julia’s last words: ‘It was the band! The speckled band!’” This piece of support creates soundness within the rivals, therefore creating a gap separating C1 (positioning it at the top in the second schematized argument) apart from C2 and

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