Dr. Grimesby Roylott is the main antagonist of the Sherlock Holmes Story The Speckled Band.
History[]
The Roylott family of Stoke Moran, Hampshire, was once one of the oldest and wealthiest Anglo-Saxon families in Surrey. However, four wasteful heirs and a gambler had reduced the family to a heavily mortgaged, semi-ruined manor and 200 acres. The last squire of Stoke Moran was reduced to an aristocratic pauper. His only son, Grimesby Roylott, obtained an advance from a relative, went to India, and established himself as a physician.
Grimesby inherited a disposition with a violent temper and immense strength. Angered by a robbery, he beat his Indian butler to death, for which he served a prison sentence. In India, he married a relatively wealthy widow, Mrs. Stoner, who had two daughters, Julia and Helen. After 22 years abroad, Grimesby returned to England and attempted to restart his medical practice. However, his wife was killed in a railway accident. Grimesby took his two stepdaughters to his ancestral home, but his violent temper and strength led him to become a terror to the local community. After six years, Julia became engaged to be married. Two weeks before her wedding, she died under mysterious circumstances. In due time, Helen also became engaged, but strange happenings—a whistle and a hissing noise—frightened her so much that she sought the advice of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
On Holmes's advice, Helen allowed the two investigators into her sister's old room. Holmes noticed a light in a connecting ventilator and heard a hissing noise. He lit a match and struck at a dummy bell-rope upon hearing a whistle. Soon, they both heard a scream from Dr. Roylott's room. They found that Grimesby had been instantly killed by an Indian adder, the titular Speckled Band. The adder was then locked up in a nearby safe.
Holmes revealed to Watson his method of deduction: "...My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the Doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless man who had had Eastern training. The rapidity with which such a poison would take effect would also, from his point of view, be an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner indeed who could distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where the poison fangs had done their work..."
Grimesby’s motive? Holmes leaves for the courthouse to examine Helen's mother's will. Due to the fall in investment prices, the yearly income of £1, 100 is now reduced to £750. Each daughter can claim an income of £250 in case of marriage, but Roylott would not have much to live on. Holmes admits that his startling the snake made him indirectly responsible for Roylott's death, but given his nature and that it saved Helen Stoner, he does not foresee it troubling him. Additionally, he chooses not to tell the police of Roylott's full motive to spare Helen any further grief.
Trivia[]
- Roylott apparently trained the snake to travel using a bell-cord with milk and a whistle. This is not possible in real life. Snakes don't drink milk, only mammals can, they don't have ears (those charmers use the movements of the flutes), and they move using the scales on their bellies, so they couldn't possibly climb up a bell-cord all by itself.
