Sherlock Holmes Short Stories : The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

                  The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Released	1892
Series	The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Client(s)	Violet Hunter
Set in	1890, according to William S. Bearing
Villain(s)	Jephro Rucastle and in a way his wife (Mrs. Rucastle

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the last of the twelve collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in Strand Magazine
in June 1892.

Plot summary

Violet Hunter consulting Holmes.

Violet Hunter visits Holmes, asking whether she should accept a job as governess; a job with very strange conditions. She is enticed by the phenomenal salary which, as originally offered, is £100 a year, later increased to £120 when Miss Hunter baulks at having to cut her long hair short. This is only one of many peculiar provisos to which she must agree. The employer, Jephro Rucastle, seems pleasant enough, yet Miss Hunter obviously has her suspicions.
She announces to Holmes, after the raised salary offer, that she will take the job, and Holmes suggests that if he is needed, a telegram will bring him to Hampshire, where Mr Rucastle's country estate, the Copper Beeches, is situated.
After a fortnight, Holmes receives such a message, beseeching him to come and see her in Winchester. Miss Hunter tells them one of the most singular stories that they have ever heard. Mr Rucastle would sometimes have Miss Hunter wear an electric blue dress and sit in the front room reading, with her back to the front window. She began to suspect that she was not supposed to see something outside the window, and a small mirror shard hidden in her handkerchief showed her that she was right: there was a man standing there on the road looking towards the house.
At another such session, Mr Rucastle told a series of funny stories that made Miss Hunter laugh until she was quite weary. The one astonishing thing about this was that Mrs Rucastle not only didn't laugh, but didn't even smile.
There were other unsavoury things about the household. The six-year-old child that she was supposed to look after was astonishingly cruel to small animals. The servants, Mr and Mrs Toller, were quite a sour pair. A great mastiff was kept on the property, and always kept hungry. It was let out to prowl the grounds at night and Miss Hunter was warned not to cross the threshold after dark. Also, Toller, who was quite often drunk, was the only one who had any control over the dog.
There was also the odd discovery by Miss Hunter of her own tresses in a locked drawer. Upon checking her own luggage, however, they turned out to be another woman's, but identical in every way to Miss Hunter's, even to the unusual colour.
However, the most disturbing thing of all about the household was the mystery wing. Miss Hunter had observed that there was a part of the house that did not seem to be used. The windows were either dirty or shuttered, and once she saw Mr Rucastle coming out of the door leading into the wing looking most perturbed. Later, he explained that he used the rooms for his photography  hobby, but Miss Hunter was not convinced.
A drunken Toller leaves the keys in the door to the mystery wing. Miss Hunter sneaks in. She finds the place spooky and although she doesn't discover anything, she panics and runs out, into Mr Rucastle's waiting arms. Mr Rucastle doesn't reproach her, instead he pretends to comfort her. However, he overdoes his act and alerts her suspicions. In an instant, his expression changes from comfort to rage. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Mr Ruscastle is his acting ability and dual personality.
With the aid of the great detective, it is discovered that someone has been kept a prisoner in the forbidden wing. The purpose of hiring Miss Hunter becomes clear: her presence is to convince the man watching from the road that Rucastle's daughter Alice, previously unknown to Miss Hunter, and whom she resembles, is no longer interested in seeing him.

Watson rescuing Rucastle from his mastiff

Holmes, Watson and Miss Hunter find Miss Rucastle's secret room empty; Rucastle thinks the trio has helped his daughter escape and goes to fetch the mastiff. Unfortunately for Rucastle, the dog has been accidentally starved for longer than usual and attacks him instead. Watson shoots the dog with his revolver. Later, Mrs Toller confirms Holmes' theory about Rucastle's daughter and reveals that when Alice came of age she was to receive an annuity from her late mother's will; Rucastle tried to force his daughter to sign over control of the inheritance over to him which only resulted in Alice becoming ill with brain fever, hence, the cut hair. Rucastle then tried to keep Alice away from her fiancé by locking her up in the mystery wing and hiring Miss Hunter to unknowingly impersonate Alice.

Rucastle's daughter escapes with her fiancé, and they marry soon after. Watson notes, at the end of the story, that Holmes appears to have been drawn to Miss Hunter. However, to his disappointment, Holmes does not show any interest in Miss Hunter after the mystery has been solved, which was the real force behind his feelings. Rucastle survives as an invalid, kept alive solely by his second wife. Miss Hunter later becomes principal of a girls' school.

Sherlock Holmes Short Stories : The Hound of the Baskervilles

                                                              The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detectiveSherlock Holmes . Originally Serialised in the Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound

             Plot Summary

Aune Mire, a typical Dartmoor bog

Curse of Baskerville - A Flashback

Sir Charles was found dead in the yew valley due to heart attack. Fearing for the safety of Sir Charles’s nephew Sir Henry, who was coming to London from Canada, Dr. Edward Mortimer appeals for help to Sherlock Holmes. Mortimer reads to Holmes and Watson a description of the origin of the curse written by a descendant of Hugo Baskerville. The curse he believes, chases the Baskervilles for centuries, in revenge for the misdeeds of Sir Hugo Baskerville, who lived in an earlier time. According to the legend, Hugo Baskerville, an evil man with a sadistic streak, became infatuated with a yeoman's daughter, kidnapped her and imprisoned her in his bedchamber. She managed to escape while he was talking with his friends. A drunken and furious Hugo cried that he would give his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he could only overtake her. He rode after her onto the moor, his hunting hounds upon her scent and his friends in pursuit. Sometime later his friends came upon the bodies of Hugo and the girl. She had died from fear and fatigue, while a giant spectral hound stood over Sir Hugo's body. With his friends watching, the hound plucked out Hugo's throat and disappeared into the night.

 Present day

Mortimer has deduced that Sir Charles had been waiting for someone at the time of his death. Sir Charles' face was contorted into a ghastly expression. His footprints suggested that he was desperately running from something. It was known that elderly Sir Charles' heart was not strong, and that he planned to go to London the next day. Mortimer also reveals that he observed the footprints "of a gigantic hound" near Sir Charles' body, a fact he did not reveal at the inquest into the death. Intrigued by the case, Holmes meets with Sir Henry, who has arrived from Canada. He is puzzled by an anonymous note delivered to his hotel room, warning him to avoid the moor. The note is composed of letters cut from a newspaper which Holmes recognises as the previous day’s Times. Only the word "moor" is handwritten. The sputtering of the pen and the lack of ink suggest the note was written in a hotel. The fact that the letters were cut with small nail scissors suggests a woman, as does the scent of perfume. This last detail Holmes keeps to himself. When Holmes and Watson join Sir Henry at his hotel, they learn one of his new boots has gone missing. No good explanation can be found for the loss.

The ghostly black dog of British folklore.

Holmes asked if there were any other relatives besides Henry. Mortimer tells him that Charles had two brothers. Henry is the son of the elder Sir Henry who settled in Canada and raised him in both Canada and the USA. Another brother, Roger, was known to be the family black sheep. A wastrel and inveterate gambler,he "made England too hot to hold him" and left for South America to avoid creditors. He is believed to have died there alone.
Despite the note's warning, Sir Henry insists on visiting Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry leaves Holmes' Baker Street apartment, Holmes and Dr Watson follow him and spy a man with a fake-looking black beard in a cab also following him. He escapes when chased but Holmes catches the cab number. Holmes then stops in at a messenger office and employs a young boy, Cartwright, to go around to the hotels and look through the wastepaper in search of a cut-up copy of the Times.
By the time they return to the hotel, Sir Henry has had another boot stolen, an old one now. When the first missing boot is discovered before the meeting is over, Holmes begins to realise they must be dealing with a real hound (hence the emphasis on the scent of the used boot). When conversation turns to the man in the cab, Mortimer says that Barrymore, the servant at Baskerville Hall, has a beard, and a telegram is sent to check on his whereabouts. The inheritance is also discussed – while it is a sizable amount, the next in line is James Desmond, an elderly clergyman with little interest in wealth.
At the end of the meeting, it is decided that, Holmes being tied up in London with other cases, Watson will accompany Sir Henry to the Hall and report back by telegram in detail. Later that evening, telegrams from Cartwright (who was unable to find the newspaper) and Baskerville Hall (where Barrymore apparently is) bring an end to those leads. Also, a visit from John Clayton, who was driving the cab with the black-bearded man, is of little help. He does say that the man told him that he was the detective Holmes, much to the surprise and amusement of the actual Holmes.

 Watson takes charge

The Great Bittern

Mortimer, Watson, and Sir Henry set off for Baskerville Hall the following Saturday. The baronet is excited to see it and his connection with the land is clear, but the mood is soon dampened. Soldiers are about the area, on the lookout for the escaped convict Selden, who committed a vicious murder. Barrymore and his wife tell the baronet they wish to depart Baskerville Hall as soon as is convenient, and the Hall is, in general, a somber place. Watson has trouble sleeping that night, and hears a woman sobbing. The next morning Barrymore denies that it was his wife, who is one of only two women in the house. Watson sees Mrs. Barrymore later in the morning, however, and observes clear evidence that she has indeed been weeping.
Watson checks with the postmaster in Grimpen village and learns that the telegram was not actually delivered into the hands of Barrymore, so it is no longer certain that he was at the Hall, and not in London. On his way back, Watson meets Jack Stapleton, a naturalist familiar with the moor even though he has only been in the area for two years. They hear a moan that the peasants attribute to the hound, but Stapleton attributes it to the cry of a bittern, or possibly the bog settling. He then runs off after a specimen of the butterfly cyclopedes, which was still found on Dartmoor until the 1860s. Watson is not alone for long before Beryl Stapleton, Jack's sister, approaches him. Mistaking him for Sir Henry, she urgently warns him to leave the area, but drops the subject when her brother returns. The three walk to Merripit House (the Stapletons’ home), and during the discussion, Watson learns that Stapleton used to run a school. Though he is offered lunch and a look at Stapleton’s collections, Watson departs for the Hall. Before he gets far along the path, Miss Stapleton overtakes him and retracts her warning. Watson notices that the brother and sister don't look very much alike.
Sir Henry soon meets Miss Stapleton and becomes romantically interested, despite her brother’s intrusions. Watson meets another neighbour, Mr. Frankland, a harmless eccentric whose primary pastime is initiating lawsuits. Barrymore draws increasing suspicion, as Watson sees him late at night walk with a candle into an empty room, hold it up to the window, and then leave. Realising that the room has a view out on the moor, Watson and Sir Henry determine to figure out what is going on.
Meanwhile, during the day, Sir Henry continues to pursue Beryl Stapleton until her brother runs up on them and yells angrily. He later explains to the disappointed baronet that it was not personal, he was just afraid of losing his only companion so quickly. To show there are no hard feelings, he invites Sir Henry to dine with him and his sister on Friday.

Photograph of prisoners at Dart moor tried together carrying a cart out the gates, circa 1900.

Escaped convict

Sir Henry then becomes the person doing the surprising, when he and Watson walk in on Barrymore, catching him at night in the room with the candle. Barrymore refuses to answer their questions, since it is not his secret to tell, but Mrs. Barrymore’s. She tells them that the runaway convict Selden is her brother and the candle is a signal to him that food has been left for him. When the couple return to their room, Sir Henry and Watson go off to find the convict, despite the poor weather and frightening sound of the hound. They see Selden by another candle, but are unable to catch him. Watson notices the outlined figure of another man standing on top of a tor with the moon behind him, but he likewise gets away.
Barrymore is upset when he finds out that they tried to capture Selden, but when an agreement is reached to allow Selden to flee the country, he is willing to repay the favor. He tells them of finding a mostly burnt letter asking Sir Charles to be at the gate at the time of his death. It was signed with the initials L.L. Mortimer tells Watson the next day those initials could stand for Laura Lyons, Frankland’s daughter. She lives in Coombe Tracey. When Watson goes to talk to her, she admits to writing the letter in hopes that Sir Charles would be willing to help finance her divorce, but says she never kept the appointment.
Frankland has just won two law cases and invites Watson in, as his carriage passes by, to help him celebrate. Barrymore had previously told Watson that another man lived out on the moor besides Selden, and Frankland unwittingly confirms this, when he shows Watson through his telescope the figure of a boy carrying food. Watson departs the house and goes in that direction. He finds the prehistoric stone dwelling where the unknown man has been staying, goes in, and sees a message reporting on his own activities. He waits, revolver at the ready, for the unknown man to return.

 Holmes reappears

The unknown man proves to be Holmes. He has kept his location a secret so that Watson would not be tempted to come out and so he would be able to appear on the scene of action at the critical moment. Watson’s reports have been of much help to him, and he then tells his friend some of the information he’s uncovered – Stapleton is actually married to the woman passing as Miss Stapleton, and was also promising marriage to Laura Lyons to get her cooperation. As they bring their conversation to an end, they hear a ghastly scream.

They run towards the sound and finding a body, they mistake it for Sir Henry. As their misery and regret grow, they realise it is actually the escaped convict Selden, the brother of Mrs Barrymore, dressed in the baronet’s old clothes (which had been given to Barrymore by way of further apology for distrusting him). Then Stapleton appears, and while he makes excuses for his presence, Holmes announces that he will return to London the next day, his investigations having produced no result.
Holmes and Watson return to Baskerville Hall where, over dinner, the detective stares at Hugo Baskerville's portrait. Calling Watson over after dinner he covers the hair to show the face, revealing its striking likeness to Stapleton. This provides the motive in the crime – with Sir Henry gone, Stapleton could lay claim to the Baskerville fortune, being clearly a Baskerville himself. When they return to Mrs. Lyons’s apartment, Holmes' questioning forces her to admit Stapleton’s role in the letter that lured Sir Charles to his death. They go to the railway station to meet Det. Inspector Lestrade, whom Holmes has called in by telegram.
Under the threat of advancing fog, Watson, Holmes, and Lestrade lie in wait outside Merripit House, where Sir Henry has been dining. When the baronet leaves and sets off across the moor, Stapleton looses the hound. It really is a terrible beast, but Holmes and Watson manage to shoot it before it can hurt Sir Henry seriously, as well as discovering that its hellish appearance was acquired by means of phosphorus. They discover the beaten Mrs. Stapleton bound and gagged in an upstairs room of Merripit House. When she is freed, she tells them of Stapleton’s hideout; an island deep in the Great Grimpen Mire. They look for him next day, unsuccessfully, as he is dead, having lost his footing and being sucked down into the foul and bottomless depths of the mire. Holmes and Watson are only able to find and recover Sir Henry's boot used by Stapleton to give the hound Sir Henry's scent.

 Epilogue

Some weeks later, Watson questions Holmes about the Baskerville case. Holmes reveals that Stapleton is the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, and with the same name as his father. Although believed to have died unmarried, Rodger Baskerville had married and had a son. The son John Rodger Baskerville, after embezzling public money in Costa Rica, took the name Vandeleur and fled to England where he used the money to fund a Yorkshire school. Unfortunately for him, the tutor he had hired died of consumption, and after an epidemic of the disease killed three students the school itself failed. Now using the name Stapleton, Baskerville/Vandeleur fled with his wife to Dartmoor. He apparently supported himself by burglary, engaging in four large robberies and pistolling a page who surprised him.
Having learned the story of the hound, he resolved to kill off the remaining Baskervilles so that he could come into the inheritance as the last of the line. He had no interest in the estate and simply wanted the inheritance money. He purchased the hound and hid it in the mire at the site of an abandoned tin mine.
On the night of his death, Sir Charles had been waiting for Laura Lyons. The cigar ash at the scene ("the ash had twice dropped from his cigar") showed he had waited for some time. Instead he met the hound, that had been trained by Stapleton and covered with phosphorus to give it an unearthly appearance. Sir Charles ran for his life, but then had the fatal heart attack which killed him. Since dogs do not eat or bite dead bodies, it left him there untouched.
Stapleton followed Sir Henry in London, and also stole his new boot but later returned it, since it had not been worn and thus lacked Sir Henry's scent. Holmes speculated that the hotel bootblack had been bribed to steal an old boot of Henry's instead. The hound pursued Selden to his death in a fall because he was wearing Sir Henry's old clothes.
On the night the hound attacked Sir Henry, Stapleton's wife had refused to have any further part in Stapleton's plot, but her abusive husband beat and tied her to a pole to prevent her from warning him.
In Holmes' words: "..he (Stapleton) has for years been a desperate and dangerous man.." It was his consuming interest in entomology that allowed Holmes to identify him as the same man as Vandeleur, the former schoolmaster.

Sherlock Holmes Short Stoies :"The Man with the Twisted Lip"

"The Man with the Twisted Lip"
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Released	1891
Series	The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Client(s)	Mrs. St. Clair
Set in	1889
Villain(s)	None

"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short stories of Sherlock Holmes written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891

Plot summary
Dr.Watson  is called upon late at night by a female friend. Her husband has been absent for several days and, as he is an opium addict, she is sure he has been indulging in a lengthy drug binge in a dangerous East End opium den. Frantic with worry, she seeks Dr. Watson's help in fetching him home. Watson does this, but he also finds his friend Sherlock Holmes in the den, disguised as an old man, trying to extract information about a new case from the addicts in the den.
Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman, has disappeared. Making the matter even more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den, in Upper Swandam Lane, a rather rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that there was something very wrong.
Naturally, she tries to enter the building, but her way was blocked by the opium den's owner, a Lascar. She quickly fetches the police, but they cannot find Mr. St. Clair. The room, in whose window she saw her husband, is that of dirty, disfigured beggar. well known to the police, by the name of Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this report down a mistake of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identifies a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A further search turns up some of her husband's clothes. Later, his coat, with the pockets full of several pounds' worth of pennies and halfpennies,is found in the Thames  just below the building.
The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair's disappearance, his wife receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Taking a bath Sponge to the police station in a Gladstone Bag, Holmes washes Boone's still-dirty face, causing the mess to fall away and his face to be revealed — the face of Neville St. Clair! Upon Mr. St. Clair's immediate confession, this solves the mystery, and also creates a few problems.

The Man with the Twisted Lip

It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he was given a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.
The story is unique among Holmes stories in two ways: when the mystery is resolved, it turns out that no crime has been committed and there is no villain; and unlike other stories, Holmes (or in fact, Doyle) does not explain how he solved the mystery, and leaves it to the intelligent reader to work out (the clue is fairly enough given in the story).

 Points of interest

What the modern reader may find striking is the obvious fact that the use of narcotics was not illegal in the time of the story. Although the opium den was an environment connected with crime and underworld, it operated quite openly and legally. The selling of opium  or other drugs was in and of itself no crime in the London of 1889, and nobody so considered it.
Another contention is that many Sherlockian mysteries have solutions based on seemingly unlikely events. The ability of St. Clair to earn a good living begging is considered by some to be such a plot point, but others disagree. For example in Toronto a woman known as the "shaky bag lady" did this very thing, surpassing the efforts of common beggars by presenting herself as more pathetic than legitimate beggars. The plot may have been suggested by Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1561) in which he describes the unmasking of the 'counterfeit crank' Nicholas Jennings, who begs by day displaying his false sores, while returning at night to a comfortable home with a housekeeper.

Sherlock Holmes Short Stories :The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb

"The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , is the ninth of the twelve stories collected inThe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . The story was first published in Strand Magazine in March 1892.

 Synopsis

Hatherley losing his thumb.

In his narration, Dr.Watson notes that this is only one of two cases which he personally brought to the attention of Sherlock Holmes.
The story, set in 1889, mainly consists of a young London consultant hydraulic engineer, Mr. Victor Hatherley, recounting strange happenings of the night before, first to Dr. Watson who dresses the stump where Mr. Hatherley's thumb has been cut off, and then to Sherlock Holmes himself.
Hatherley had been visited in his office by a man who identified himself as Colonel Lysander Stark. He offered Hatherley a commission at a country house, to examine a hydralic press used, as Stark explains, to compress fuller's earth into bricks. Stark warned Hatherley to keep the job confidential, offering himw 50 guineas (£52 10s, an enormous sum at the time, worth over 4000 GBP today. Hatherley felt compelled to take this work, despite his misgivings, as his business was newly established and he had very little work.
Upon arriving late at night at the appointed train station, Hatherley is met by Colonel Stark, is blindfolded and driven a considerable distance in a carriage to the house where he is to examine the machine. (A minor detail is that the house was actually quite near the station, and the carriage drove around in circles to disguise the house's location from Hatherley). Hatherley is still under the spell of the 50 guineas and does not become afraid even when a woman at the house warns him to flee. He is presently shown the press, and makes his recommendations as to needed repairs. Then, he rashly decides to inspect the press more closely, discovering that it is certainly not used for pressing fuller's earth. Hatherley narrowly escapes getting crushed to death when the machine is turned on, and is forced to jump from a window and run for his life, in the process getting his thumb severed.
Holmes then makes sense of the happenings, recognising Stark and his allies as counterfeiters, but he, Watson, and the police arrive too late: the house is on fire, and the perpetrators have fled. Ironically, the press was destroyed when Hatherley's lamp was crushed inside it, setting the machine on fire and ruining the criminals' operation.This case is one of the few where Holmes fails to bring the villains to justice.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

                                                  The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Plot summary

Holmes, Helen Stoner and Watson,

A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about the suspicious death of her sister, Julia. One night, after conversing with her twin sister about her big day, Julia screamed and came to the hallway where Helen came out to see her, in Julia's dying words she said "it was the band, the speckled band!" Julia had been engaged to be married and, had she lived, would have received an annual 250 GBP annuity from her late mother's income. Now Helen is engaged to be married. Holmes' investigation of the mother's estate reveals that its value has decreased significantly, and if both daughters had married, Dr. Roylott, Helen's ill-tempered and violent stepfather, would be left with very little, while the marriage of even one would be crippling. Therefore, the main suspicion falls on him.
Dr. Roylott has required Helen to move into a particular room of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. A number of details about the place are mysterious and disturbing. A low whistling sound is heard late at night, as well as a metallic clank. There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies, whom Dr. Roylott permits to live on the grounds—they wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott keeps exotic pets. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room.
After Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Dr. Roylott bends an iron poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again, thus showing that he is just as strong as the doctor.
Having arranged for Helen to spend the night somewhere else, Holmes and Watson sneak into her bedroom without Dr. Roylott's knowledge. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and this test of his theory turns out to be successful. They hear the whistle, and Holmes also sees what the bell cord is really for, although Watson does not. Julia's last words about a "speckled band" were in fact describing "a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India". The venomous snake had been sent to Julia's room by Dr. Roylott to murder her. After the swamp adder bit Julia, he called off the snake with the whistling, which made the snake climb up through the bell cord, disappearing from the scene.
Now the swamp adder is sent again through the ventilator by Dr. Roylott to kill Julia's sister Helen. Holmes attacks the snake, sending it back through an air ventilator connected to the next room. The aggravated snake bites Dr. Roylott instead, and, within seconds, he is dead. Grimly noting that he is indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott's death, Holmes remarks that he is unlikely to feel much grief towards it.

All Things Bright and Beautiful By James Herriot

                                                                 Plot Summary

                                             All Things Bright and Beautiful
"The second book in James Herriot's series about his life as a country vet, All Things Bright and Beautiful is about the time between his marriage to Helen and his calling-up for WWII, with some flashbacks to his bachelor days. Again, this book contains stories from his practice and his daily life - the animals, the people he meets, his partner Siegfried, his partner's brother Tristan, his wife. By turns funny, sad, and insightful, this book is another of Herriot's classics.""This book describes problems the author has to face in order to become a full-fledged 9-to-5 and beyond working vet. He struggles through his first job as a vet and comes out with flying colors, with the help of his ever-ready boss and partner Siegfried, and Siegfried's brother, Tristan. He describes his carefree days as a bachelor, living with these two eccentric brothers, and how he is accepted by the farming community they serve.
He also tells of Tristan's way of slipping out of sticky situations, and how he manages to keep out of trouble himself.
The most poignant recollections are those, when he meets his future wife Helen, and gets to know her better. He describes not only the people around him, and how they teach him the lessons of life, but also the animals he treats.
In all he writes simply of what happened to him in his starting years as a vet, and tells of how, he overcomes all difficulties he faces in those times."