First published in the February 1892 issue of The Strand Magazine

First published in a collection in 1892 in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

 

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Dr Grimesby Roylott, Helen Stoner, Julia Stoner

Case Date: April 1883

 

Storyline:

When Miss Julia Stoner cried out to her sister: "O, my God! Helen! it was the band!" her allusion was in no sense orchestral; for she added "The speckled band!" and lapsed into an unconsciousness from which she never recovered. In retailing the incident to Sherlock Holmes, Helen Stoner inclines to the view that a band of gypsies, or even, more specifically, their spotted - handkerchief headgear, might have sprung somehow to her sister’s demented mind.

Working as he does rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, Holmes only demands of an investigation that it should 'tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic'; and, certainly, he has no need to stretch this principle to embrace the remarkable occurrences at Stoke Moran. The unusual is present in abundance: whistles in the night, a cheetah and a baboon roaming freely in the grounds, the sudden clang as of a mass of metal falling; and the ever-sinister supervision of the brawling, bullying Dr. Grimesby Roylott, whose name deserves to rank with Palmer’s and Pritchard’s for notoriety amongst his profession. Still, if Dr. Roylott can bend a poker with his bare hands, Holmes can straighten it again with his; and Watson has his trusty Eley’s No. 2 nestling in his pocket to help sustain them through a night that must bring horrors enough before it is over.