A Study in Sherlock. Raymond G. Farney

       Publication & Dates:Strand, February 1892The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. (8th story) 1892Illustrations: Sidney Paget (9)Conan Doyle’s 10th storyHolmes’ 4th case

       Story Introduction:On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, and a large number of merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of the art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigations which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know there are widespread rumours as to the death of Dr. Grimsby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth.It was early in April, in the year ’83, that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was a late riser as a rule, and, as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits.“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,” said he, “but it’s the common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”“What is it, then? A fire?”“No, a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a considerable state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She is waiting now in the sitting room. Now, when young ladies wander about the Metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock sleeping people up out of their beds, I presume that it is something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to follow it from the outset. I thought at any rate that I should call you and give you the chance.”“My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything.”I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis, with which he unravelled the problems which were submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my clothes, and was ready in a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black and heavily veiled who had been sitting in the window, rose as we entered.“Oh my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!”Case Information

       Date:“It was early in April, in the year ’83, that I woke one morning.”

       Duration:1 Day

       Crime:Murder and Attempted Murder.

       Client:Helen Stoner, “Her features and figure were those of the woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature gray and her expression was weary and haggard.”

       Holmes’ Observation of Client:“You have come in by train this morning, I see.”-----“I observed the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove.”-----“You had a good ride in a dog-cart, along heavy roads before you reached the Station.”-----“The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven places. This is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way.”

       Victims:Julia Stoner, murdered two weeks before she was to be married.Helen Stoner was to be murdered.

       Crime Scene:Second Bedroom at Stoke Moran Manor House, Surrey, gray gables and high roof-tree of the very old mansion. “It was a homely little room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old country-houses. A brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow white-counterpaned bed in another, and the dressing table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with the two small wickerwork chairs, made up all of the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and the paneling on the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of the house.”Holmes’ Examination of the Room“You will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to this floor.” He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in his hands and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks between the boards. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which the chamber was panelled. Finally he walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and running his eye up and down the wall. Finally he took the bell-rope in his hands and gave it a brisk tug. “Why, it’s a dummy,” he said.“Very strange!” muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. “There are one or two very singular points about this room. For example, what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another room, when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated with the outside air!”

       Criminal:Dr. Grimesby Roylott, Helen’s stepfather.“Our door had been suddenly dashed open and that a huge man framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar mixture of the professional and the agricultural, having a black top hat, a long frock coat, and a pair of high gaiters, with the hunting crop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway and his breadth seemed to span it across side to side. A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun.”The last survivor of one of the oldest Saxton families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.The family was at one time among the richest of England and the estate extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler, in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage.Has medical degree and established a large practice in Calcutta, India.Served a long term of imprisonment in India for beating his native butler to death.“He has a passion also for Indian animals, he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon which wander freely over his ground.”

       Punishment:None. “Besides this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott, clad in the long gray dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath it, and his feet thrust into red heeled Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his head.”— “The band! The speckled band!” whispered Holmes.“violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”Official inquiry came to the conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet.

       Official Police:None. “Let the county police know what has happened,” said Holmes.

       Characters:No Others Mentioned.

       Others Mentioned:Mrs. Hudson, “Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, and she retorted upon me, and I on you.”Mrs. Farintosh, a friend of Helen Stoner who referred her to Holmes, who he had helped regarding an opal tiara.Julia Stoner, Helen’s twin sister, who died two years earlier, at the age of thirty. Murdered by her stepfather.Wandering Gypsies Roylott allowed to camp on the property.Percy Armitage, Helen Stoner’s fiancé. The second son of Mr. Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading.Mrs. Stoner, Helen’s deceased mother who met Dr. Roylott as young widow, and they married when the girls were two years old. She was killed eight years ago in a railway accident near Crewe.Major-General Stoner of the Bengal artillery, Helen’s deceased father.Miss Honoria Westphail, Helen’s aunt, lived near Harrow, her mother’s maiden sister.Major of Marines, Julia’s fiancé, “a half-pay major of marines.” She met a few