Summary
Helen Stoner begs Holmes for help with a strange situation that gives her cause to fear for her own life at her stepfather's house at Stoke Moran. Her stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, had married Helen's mother in India and gained from her a substantial amount of money before her death, after which he moved with Helen and her twin sister Julia to his ancestral home and gave the two girls little opportunity to enjoy the society of others.
Not long after Julia announced her engagement, Helen was awoken in the middle of the night by a strange whistle and a clanging of metal, and then she saw Julia in a terrified state crying something about a "speckled band." By an unknown cause, Julia then died.
Helen had just become engaged herself and fears that she will meet a similar fate. Holmes hides with Watson in Julia's former room, where Dr. Roylott had made Helen move, and then, when he hears the strange whistle, beats at something in a metal grate above the bed. He and Watson then go to Dr. Roylott's room where they find him dead of the poisonous bite of the speckled band, a snake Dr. Roylott had brought from India.
Analysis
In a sense, Conan Doyle is able to use the detective genre as a template in which he can engage with other genres. In the present story, the plot and narrative style of the mystery are highly reminiscent of Gothic novels such as Charlotte Brönte's Wuthering Heights, with the isolation of women in a mysterious mansion whose workings they do not completely comprehend, and a man with dark secrets.
Although it is revealed in the end that Dr. Roylott wanted to prevent his stepdaughters from marrying in order to hold onto their mother's inheritance, a financial motive quite common among the tales, the mood in which the case is presented is considerably more emotionally charged.
Helen Stoner's explanation of her case sets this tone: "'It is not cold which makes me shiver… It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.' She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn and gray, with restless, frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features and figure were those of a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature gray, and her expression was weary and haggard" (177-8).
