Now back to story first I shall study Mary Maloney, so far every time I’ve heard someone study her she’s the one who couldn’t be a killer but she is wife to a senior detective, has friends down at the precinct knows, presumably, how police investigations are carried out & what the police are looking for, also she knows how to act after committing murder. However she does love her husband just to be near him was bliss for her “She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man”.
She shows a distinct power of concentration and an amazing power of self-belief of he’s still alive (“She was returning home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper”) after killing him but her mind seems less than capable of keeping up this charade “And in the other room Mary Maloney began to giggle”.
Dr.Roylott is a man who is seen as a murder, criminal and killer. He is a brutal man “He beat his native butler to death” and cruel as Holmes points out to Helen Stoner “You have been cruelly used” Roylott is a proud man who is willing to kill to keep his family house alive.
He is a big strong man as shown in the fact he can bend steel pokers in knots. He also shows the behavior of a crazy man he dress code isn’t the standard and his family has shown a line of violent men. Mary’s murder weapon is the leg of lamb, which is against all other types of homicide.
It shows the spur of the moment, as a premeditated murder would have been committed with a knife or gun etc.
Dr.Roylott uses a deadly vicious animal in The Indian Swamp Adder. Roylott shows he’s brutality all the way through the story but this shows how really brilliant he can be, I mean nobody knows its there and as the old maxim goes “You cant fight what you cant see” Lamb To The Slaughter is set in United States of America we know this because of the Irish second names, the word ‘precinct’, ‘Idaho’ and ‘closet’ more precisely The Maloney’s Household it seems to me as a suburb house as opposed to the Bronx or Rhode Island. The timing was probably late as Mary fails to mention any one else in streets and if it was daylight the murder happened right beside a window, also there’s the fact that it was supper. Its atmosphere is calm and “tranquil”
The Speckled Band was set in England during the 19th century we can tell this by the use of Victorian language ‘dog cart’ ‘defray’ (defray is used today but is a lot less common) ‘would fain’. It has settings based in Stoke Moran & London/Baker Street the first part focuses on London and the latter part focusing on the Stoke Moran. Roylott’s house in Stoke Moran is a grand manor but with little money to keep this beauty aloft.
Its walls are decaying full with green lichen and “There jutted out of the gray gables and high roof tree of a very old mansion” and when Holmes arrives everything is being redone implying scaffolding of some sort with one wing left in livable conditions its no wonder. The 3 rooms Holmes looks at are Helen’s now abandoned thanks to construction work. Julia’s room with a ventilator going in the wrong wall, a fake bell ring, the bed was clamped down and the room was impenetrable (thanks to iron bars over the windows, cage over fireplace and locked from inside). Then there’s Roylott’s room with less furniture than the rest but with some irregularities such as the ventilator from Julia’s room the metal safe, a tied up dog leash like a noose and a saucer of milk. This atmosphere has a sinister feel to it all the way through.
The Method of murder in Lamb to the Slaughter was a pure crime of Passion, no thought, no planning and no motive, just spur of the moment type killing. She simply whacked him over the head with a piece of frozen meat. Her alibi was “At the grocery” Nothing more can said about this subject. Roylotts method was a hell of a lot sinister and evil with a motive for money and an excellent mind, he’s a man to fear. He got a snake put it through his end of the ventilator the snake went down the fake bell pull and stayed there until Julia moved or the whistle from Roylott told it to return and locked it in the safe with the treat of a saucer of milk. His alibi is he couldn’t enter the room so couldn’t have killed her.
Investigators in Lamb to Slaughter were Srg. Jack Noonan, O’Malley and other members of the NYPD or LAPD or wherever they live probably city on Eastern seaboard due to large Irish names. They fail to pick up the word frozen and agree to bend rules because they know Mary “Well its not strictly allowed but I might take one drop to keep me going”. Which eventually leads to them eating the murder weapon.
Sherlock Holmes the brilliant, eminent Sherlock shows thought, skill, in every powerful stare. Sherlock is a strong man but he’s greatest tool is he’s mind, with which he loves to be challenged with these unusual cases he always takes upon. The Lamb to The Slaughter is a modern story and is portrayed in the language with its easy to understand slang mixed with basic language such as “Hullo”. Also have American words such as Idaho, precinct and closet. Sentence structure is short and quick as with conversions “who’s speaking?” “Mrs.Maloney Mrs. Patrick Maloney” “You mean Patrick’s dead”
While The Speckled Band is a bit older English not Shakespearian but still had words such as “would fain” not a soul today uses that. It uses Victorian expressions, with large words and even larger sentences and paragraphs. There is no slang at all in this story as it sticks to more standard words. The structure of the entire story in Lamb 2 the Slaughter is chronological order time occurrence while The Speckled Band goes from present to past (Helens story) & Then it goes back to present. Similarities between the two are both rely very heavily on there alibis, both consider the man to be the evil in the story, Both women seem to be going through massive changes in there lives Mary is pregnant and Helen is getting married.
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