[adapted]

by
Arthur Conan Doyle

When I look back at my notes on the seventy or so cases I have studied over the past eight years with my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many sad ones, some funny ones, and many that were just strange—but none of them were ordinary. Holmes worked more for the love of solving mysteries than to make money, so he never took a case unless it was unusual or even strange. Out of all these different cases, I cannot remember one that was more strange than the one that had to do with the well-known Surrey family called the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. This happened in the early days when I first started working with Holmes, when we were both single men living together in Baker Street. I might have written this story down before, but I had made a promise to keep it secret at the time. I was only recently freed from that promise because the lady I made it to has sadly died. I think it is good that the truth can now be told, because I know that many people are talking about the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, and their stories make it sound even worse than what really happened.

It was early in April in the year 1883 when I woke up one morning and saw Sherlock Holmes, fully dressed, standing by my bed. He usually woke up late, so I was surprised to see him so early. The clock on the shelf showed it was only a quarter past seven. I looked up at him, surprised and maybe a little annoyed, because I liked to follow a regular routine.

“Very sorry to wake you up, Watson,” he said. “But everyone is being woken up this morning. Mrs. Hudson was woken up, she came to me, and now I have come to you.”

“What is it, then—a fire?”

“No; a client. A young lady has come and she is very upset. She says she must see me. She is waiting in the sitting-room right now. Now, when young ladies walk through the city at this early hour and wake people up out of bed, I think they must have something very important to say. If it turns out to be an interesting case, I know you would want to be part of it from the beginning. So I thought I should wake you and give you the chance.”

“My dear friend, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

There was nothing I enjoyed more than going with Holmes on his cases, and watching how quickly he made guesses that seemed like magic, but were always based on careful thinking. I quickly put on my clothes and was ready in a few minutes to go with my friend to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black with a heavy veil, who had been sitting by the window, stood up when we walked in.

“Good morning, madam,” said Holmes in a cheerful voice. “My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my close friend and partner, Dr. Watson. You can speak to him as freely as you would to me. Ah! I’m glad to see that Mrs. Hudson was smart enough to light the fire. Please come closer to it, and I’ll order you a cup of hot coffee, because I can see that you are shaking.”

“It is not the cold that makes me shake,” said the woman in a quiet voice, as she moved to the chair he showed her.

“What is it, then?”

“It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.” She lifted her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a very upset state. Her face looked tight and pale, with eyes that kept moving and looked scared, like the eyes of an animal being hunted. She looked like a woman of about thirty years old, but her hair had turned grey early, and her face looked tired and worn. Sherlock Holmes looked at her quickly with one of his sharp, careful glances.

“You must not be afraid,” he said kindly, leaning forward and gently patting her arm. “We will soon set things right, I’m sure. You came here by train this morning, I can tell.”

“You know me, then?”

“No, but I saw the second half of a return train ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have left early, and also had a ride in a dog-cart on muddy roads before you got to the train station.”

The lady gave a big start and looked at Holmes in surprise and confusion.

“There’s no mystery, madam,” he said with a smile. “The left sleeve of your coat has seven spots of mud on it. The spots are still fresh. Only a dog-cart throws mud like that, and only when someone is sitting on the left side of the driver.”

“Whatever your reasons may be, you are exactly right,” she said. “I left home before six, reached Leatherhead at twenty past six, and took the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I can’t take this pressure anymore. I will go mad if it goes on. I have no one to help me—no one except one person who cares about me, and he, poor man, cannot help much. I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard about you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you helped when she was in great need. She gave me your address. Oh sir, do you think you can help me too? Can you shine even a little bit of light into the dark mystery that surrounds me? Right now I cannot pay you for your help, but in a month or six weeks I will be married and have control over my own money. Then, at least, you will see I am thankful.”

Holmes turned to his desk, unlocked it, and took out a small notebook, which he looked through.

“Farintosh,” he said. “Ah yes, I remember the case—it had to do with an opal tiara. I believe that was before your time, Watson. I can only say, madam, that I will be glad to give your case the same care I gave to your friend. As for payment, helping people is my reward. But you are free to pay for any costs I may have, whenever it is best for you. Now, please tell us everything that may help us understand the situation.”

“Alas!” said our visitor, “the worst part of my situation is that my fears are not clear, and my worries are based only on small things that might seem unimportant to someone else. Even the one person I should be able to trust for help and advice thinks that what I tell him is just the imagination of a nervous woman. He doesn’t say it, but I can tell from the way he speaks softly and avoids looking at me. But I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the many kinds of evil in the human heart. Maybe you can tell me how to stay safe from the dangers around me.”

“I am listening carefully, madam,” said Holmes.

“My name is Helen Stoner, and I live with my stepfather, who is the last living member of one of the oldest Saxon families in England—the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, which is on the western edge of Surrey.”

Holmes nodded. “The name is known to me,” he said.

“The family was once one of the richest in England. Their land reached into Berkshire to the north and Hampshire to the west. But in the last hundred years, four family members in a row were lazy and wasteful, and the family fortune was finally lost by one who gambled everything away during the Regency period. All that was left was a small piece of land and a two-hundred-year-old house, which had a heavy debt on it. The last landowner lived there in misery, like a poor man with a noble name. But his only son—my stepfather—realized he had to live differently, so he borrowed money from a relative, studied to become a doctor, and went to Calcutta. There, he built a big practice through his medical skills and strong personality. But one day, in a burst of anger because of some robberies in the house, he beat his Indian butler to death and almost got the death penalty. Instead, he spent many years in prison. After that, he came back to England as a gloomy and bitter man.

“When Dr. Roylott was in India, he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner. She was the young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old when our mother remarried. She had quite a bit of money—not less than £1000 a year—and she gave it all to Dr. Roylott as long as we lived with him. She also made a rule that a certain amount of money would be given to each of us if we got married. Soon after we came back to England, my mother died—she was killed in a train accident near Crewe eight years ago. Dr. Roylott then gave up trying to work as a doctor in London and took us to live with him in the old family house at Stoke Moran. The money my mother left was enough for everything we needed, and it seemed like nothing would stop us from being happy.

“But a terrible change came over our stepfather around that time. Instead of making friends and visiting our neighbors, who had first been very happy to see a Roylott back in the family home, he locked himself inside the house and rarely came out, except to get into wild arguments with anyone he met. Bad tempers, almost like madness, have been common among the men in his family, and in my stepfather’s case, I think it got worse because he had lived in hot countries for so long. He got into several shameful fights—two of them even ended up in court. In the end, he became someone the whole village feared. People would run away when they saw him coming, because he is a very strong man and cannot control his anger at all.”

“Last week he threw the village blacksmith over a low wall into a stream, and I was only able to stop another public scandal by giving him all the money I could collect. He had no friends at all except for some traveling gipsies. He let these wandering people camp on the few acres of land, now covered in brambles, that are left of the family estate. In return, he would accept their hospitality and stay in their tents, sometimes going away with them for weeks at a time. He also has a strong interest in Indian animals, which are sent to him by a friend. Right now, he has a cheetah and a baboon that walk freely around his land. The villagers are almost as afraid of these animals as they are of him.

“You can imagine from this that my poor sister Julia and I did not have happy lives. No servant would stay with us, so for a long time we had to do all the housework ourselves. She was only thirty years old when she died, but her hair had already started turning white, just like mine is now.”

“Your sister is dead, then?” asked Holmes.

“She died just two years ago, and it is her death that I want to talk to you about. You can understand that, living the way we did, we did not often meet people our own age or class. But we had an aunt—my mother’s unmarried sister, Miss Honoria Westphail—who lives near Harrow. We were sometimes allowed to visit her. Julia visited her two years ago at Christmas and met a retired marine major there. She got engaged to him. My stepfather found out about the engagement when Julia came home, but he did not try to stop the wedding. However, less than two weeks before the day set for the wedding, the terrible event happened that took away my only companion.”

Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his head resting on a cushion, but now he half opened his eyes and looked at the visitor.

“Please tell me the exact details,” he said.

“That is easy for me, because I remember every part of that awful time very clearly. The house, as I said, is very old, and only one wing is lived in now. The bedrooms are on the ground floor in this part of the house, and the sitting-rooms are in the middle section. Of the three bedrooms, the first is Dr. Roylott’s, the second was my sister’s, and the third is mine. The rooms are not connected inside, but they all open into the same hallway. Am I explaining it clearly?”

“Very clearly.”

“The windows of all three rooms face the lawn. On the night it happened, Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we knew he wasn’t going to sleep yet, because my sister could smell the strong Indian cigars he liked to smoke. So she left her room and came into mine. She sat with me for a while, talking about her upcoming wedding. At eleven o’clock, she stood up to leave, but she stopped at the door and looked back.”

“‘Tell me, Helen,’ she said, ‘have you ever heard someone whistle in the middle of the night?’

“‘Never,’ I said.

“‘You couldn’t be whistling in your sleep, could you?’

“‘Of course not. But why do you ask?’

“‘Because for the last few nights, always around three in the morning, I’ve heard a low, clear whistle. I’m a light sleeper, and it has woken me up. I can’t tell where it came from—maybe the next room, maybe from the lawn. I just wanted to ask if you had heard it too.’

“‘No, I haven’t. It must be those awful gipsies in the trees.’

“‘Very likely. But if it was on the lawn, I wonder why you didn’t hear it too.’

“‘Ah, but I sleep more deeply than you do.’

“‘Well, it’s not that important anyway.’ She smiled at me, closed my door, and a few moments later I heard her lock it with her key.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes. “Did you always lock your doors at night?”

“Always.”

“And why was that?”

“I think I already told you that the Doctor kept a cheetah and a baboon. We didn’t feel safe unless our doors were locked.”

“Quite right. Please go on with your story.”

“I couldn’t sleep that night. I had a strange feeling that something bad was going to happen. You remember that my sister and I were twins, and twins often feel a special connection. It was a stormy night. The wind was howling outside, and rain was hitting the windows hard. Suddenly, in the middle of all the noise, I heard a wild scream. It was the scream of a terrified woman. I knew it was my sister’s voice. I jumped out of bed, grabbed a shawl, and ran into the hallway. As I opened my door, I thought I heard a soft whistle, just like my sister had described. A few seconds later, I heard a loud clanging sound, like something heavy made of metal had fallen. I ran down the hallway. My sister’s door was unlocked and slowly swinging open. I stared at it in fear, not knowing what might come out. In the light from the hallway lamp, I saw my sister appear in the doorway. Her face was pale with fear. Her hands were reaching out for help, and her whole body was moving unsteadily, like a person who is drunk. I ran to her and held her in my arms, but just then, her knees gave way and she fell to the floor. She twisted and turned like someone in terrible pain. Her arms and legs were shaking badly. At first I thought she didn’t know who I was, but as I leaned over her, she suddenly screamed out in a voice I will never forget, ‘Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!’ She seemed to want to say something else, and she pointed her finger toward the Doctor’s room, but then another strong shaking fit came and stopped her words. I ran out, shouting loudly for my stepfather, and I met him hurrying from his room in his dressing gown. When he got to my sister, she was already unconscious. He poured brandy into her mouth and sent someone to get a doctor from the village, but nothing helped. She slowly faded away and died without ever waking up again. That was the terrible end of my dear sister.”

“One moment,” said Holmes, “are you sure about hearing that whistle and the metal sound? Can you swear to it?”

“That’s what the county coroner asked me during the investigation. I strongly believe I heard them. But with the storm crashing and the old house making noises, maybe I was mistaken.”

“Was your sister dressed?”

“No, she was wearing her night-dress. In her right hand, they found the burned end of a match, and in her left hand, a matchbox.”

“That shows she lit a match to look around when she heard something. That’s important. And what did the coroner decide?”