In "The Speckled Band", the setting of the main part of the story is very typical of the murder mystery genre. The story is set in an old forbidding house. In one of the wings the windows were broken, and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin. The manor of Stoke Moran is the kind of place that a murder mystery is likely to take place. The more successful mystery authors like Arthur Conan-Doyle favour this type of setting (he used a large forbidding house' setting for other stories, such as "Hound of the Baskervilles-). While Stoke Moran is the typical setting of a murder mystery, victory ball is perhaps not so ominous but, a typical setting for a modern detective story. The Victory ball, is a masked ball, which allows deception to take place, the idea of the masks also suggests mystery and suspense. .
The "affair at the victory ball- is where Lord Cronshaw and Coco Courtenay were found dead at a ball. The ball was a fancy dress ball based on the Italian comedy of The Commedia dell' Arte. The costumes were based on a set of china figures forming part of Eustace Beltane's collection. Coco had died from a cocaine overdose and Lord Cronshaw was found murdered, with a table knife and a green pompon of green silk in Lord Cronshaws hand, torn from a costume. Hercule Poirot was able to identify that the green pompon had come from a costume, that she was wearing and Mrs Davidson was missing from her costume, but had not been torn off but cut to replace her husbands. Mr Davidson who had been supplying Coco drugs, as her enamel box had been found by Lord Cronshaws body and so the only person who could have given her drugs was Mr Davidson, who took her home. Mr Davidson then returned to the ball, not as his original character Pierrot but Harlequin another character. The crime seemed so insoluble, as it is repeated in the story that Lord Cronshaw had no enemies and the only person who seems to benefit from his death was his uncle Eustace Beltane, who came into charge of his estates.
