The Speckled Band

“I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart.”

One of the most creative and imaginative short stories ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Helen Stoner worries her stepfather may be trying to kill her. Shortly before her wedding he moves her to the bedroom where her sister had died two years earlier. Stoner is herself now engaged. Holmes learns of a reduction of her stepfather's annuity (from the estate of his wife—​​Stoner's mother) if either sister married. On Sherlock Holmes's visit to the house, he notices three significant clues. 1. a bed fixed to the floor 2. a dummy bell cord 3. ventilator hole between rooms. As they lie in wait a whistle sounds, then a snake appears through the ventilator. Holmes attacks the snake with his riding crop; it retreats to the next room, where it attacks and kills Stoner's stepfather.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band has a satisfying structure. The reader is drip fed information. A story inside a story. There is just enough character development to make us care about the intended victim. Who is ... a well-bred young woman in distress. Factor in an overbearing cad. Sprinkle a few foreign countries. A country mansion. A few unsavoury types, thieves and gypsies. And a complex dilemma.

This all goes to making this one of Doyle's best “closed room” short stories. He later dramatised this into a successful stage play. Recommended, and it even has a satisfying, although not 100% legal, ending.