The short stories, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” and “The Blanched Soldier,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are filled with adventurous investigations featuring the genius detective Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes and is his trustworthy assistant, Dr. Watson, investigate the problems that are brought to them by clients, Helen Stoner and Mr. James M. Dodd, whom both seek their help in coming up with solutions to their cases.
In “the Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Helen Stoner, a desperate young woman, is in need of Holmes assistance to solve her sister’s murder case, as she believes her life may be in great danger with her stepfather being around. While in “The Blanched Soldier,” Mr. Dodd brings a case in which his good friend, Godfrey Emsworth, is missing and needs Holmes help to pinpoint where he may be, he may have been vanished by his stern father. Both tales take place in England during the Victorian Era and display a great amount of society’s interest in the field of science.
Doyle demonstrates these interests by solving crime through criminology and forensic science skills which include observation, treating everything as evidence, crime-scene investigation, in the end, applies his knowledge of science to solve the case. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” and “The Blanched Soldier,” Sherlock Holmes begins his process of observation as soon as the client is in front of him until the very end of his investigation.
As Helen Stoner sits before him for her consultation he is observing everything and proves this by asking her if she took the train that morning. As she is shocked by his accurate theory Sherlock Holmes responds with, “I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove,” giving his client a glimpse of his observation process (Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 1). She goes on to explain her own theory of how she believes her sister has died of pure fear.
However, Holmes is not quite satisfied with these results because she forgets to speak about her stepfather, “’he is a hard man,’ she said, ‘and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength,” as he notices her wrist displays an imprint of a hand (Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 5). In “The Blanched Soldier,” Sherlock demonstrates the same observation method as Mr. James Dodd sits before him for the interview. He begins to take some guesses about where Dodd is from by saying, “from South Africa, sir, I perceive,” “Imperial Yeomanry, I fancy,” “Middlesex Corps, no doubt,” all were accurate, giving James the same shock as Helen Stoner Doyle, The Blanched Soldier 1).
James did most of the investigation himself before meeting with Sherlock, while he trusted his every word he listened carefully to the evidence given to him by James. Conan Doyle displays Sherlock Holmes’ genius observation skills by impressing his clients at first chance to show it was not something of magic but mere sense of logic and observation and responds to their state of shock with, “I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see,” (Doyle, The Blanched Soldier 1).
During the Victorian Era interest in knowledge is important with cases like these while Doyle clearly shows this through Sherlock’s seeing skills in the Journal of Educational Technology & Society it explains the significance of this, “semiotic paradigm of knowledge does not deal with a disciplined regulation of coded knowledge, yet the clues are there for all to see” (Patokorpi 175).
While observation is key in these two tales, another skill Sherlock Holmes uses to solve his cases is through treating everything as evidence. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” as Helen Stoner is still in her interview process he takes in every detail into consideration for the case. Sherlock Holmes asks a series of questions to his client in order to do this, he asks Ms.
Stoner the simplest questions about her sister’s odd death but they become relevant clues to the case in the end. For instance when he asks about the speckled band Julia speaks of right before her death, “Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band- a speckled band? ” and Helen goes on to talk about the gypsies in the plantation and the exotic Indian animals in the house (Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 4).
He connects this image of a speckled band to the a saucer of milk found at the scene, “Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet the saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I daresay,” hinting the clue that there is another animal she is not aware of (Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 8). In “The Blanched Soldier,” Sherlock Holmes does the same with James listening and taking everything in throughout the interview about his stay at Godfrey’s fathers, Colonel Emsworth, house.
When James explains own investigation of the detached building of the house. He notices a man inside that he had saw reading a paper and Sherlock interrupts with, “possibly you observed whether it was a broad-leafed paper or of that smaller type which one associates with weeklies,” (Doyle, The Blanched Soldier 4). Although this may seem like evidence that is non-relative to their current investigation Sherlock later proves that this connected with Godfrey’s medical condition.
Sherlock Holmes treated every small detail that came his way as important evidence and by doing this, helped him solve the cases. In the Victorian Era it is said according to Journal Of Educational Technology & Society that society believed that, “…rather than rediscovering knowledge or things that were forgotten or covered from sight, we constantly create things or knowledge anew by interpretation,” this being said Sherlock Holmes used this theory to come up with his own and is demonstrated by gathering any type of evidence that comes his way.
When the time approaches for the investigation of the crime-scene it important that Sherlock Holmes pieces every detail of evidence from both the interviews and scene together to come up with his solution for the case. Helen Stoners renovated bedroom and her stepfather’s bedroom are both the crime-scene areas. As Sherlock Holmes does his walk-through at Helen Stoners house he takes notice of all of the strange renovated areas in the bedrooms, “They seem to have been of a most interesting character—dummy bell-ropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate” (Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band 8).
While also finding that the way the bedroom is oddly arranged he also finds that the bed itself is bolted down, “It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened like that before? ” he comes up with the conclusion that all of these rearrangements and the bed unable to move cause this where the stepfather wants her to be.
