Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (5 page)

“How could you, Kaiser?”

She was fading fast, but I managed
to get it in, in time.

“The manifestation of the universe
as a complex idea unto itself as opposed to being in or outside the true Being
of itself is inherently a conceptual nothingness or Nothingness in relation to
any abstract form of existing or to exist or having existed in perpetuity and
not subject to laws of physicality or motion or ideas relating to nonmatter or
the lack of objective Being or subjective otherness.”

It was a subtle concept but I think
she understood before she died.

What! Not a Christmas story, you
say? I refer you to the winner of the fifth race at Aqueduct.

“Then
Mrs. Cratchit entered, smiling proudly, with the pudding. Oh. a wonderful
pudding! Shaped like a cannonball, blazing in half-a-quartern of ignited brandy
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top, and stuffed full with plums
and sweetmeats and sodium diacetate and monoglyceride and potassium bromate and
aluminum phosphate and calcium phosphate monobasic and chloromine T and
aluminum potassium sulfate and calcium propionate and sodium alginate and
butylated hydroxyanisole and...”

Robin Hood’s Epitaph

Hear undernead dis laith
stean

Laiz Robert Earl of Huntington

Nea arcir uer az hie sa
geude:

An piple kaud im Robin
Heud.

Sic utlawz
as
hi an iz
men,

Wil England never sigh
agen.

Obiit 24 kal. Decembris,
1247.

From a gravestone in

Kirklees Churchyard,Yorkshire.

It
is by now catechismic that Conan Doyle wrote the first of his Sherlock Holmes
stories while waiting for his medical practice to grow. He must have enjoyed
those early works as a welcome relief from the world of intractable physical
ailments. What better escape for him after a day of gas pains and ‘the vapors’
than to open his sketchbook and let his mind wander through the corridors of
Baskerville Hall or the moors outside Dartmoor Prison. It provided some needed
diversion; it also helped to pay the bills.

No wonder that, when these stories
became a chore done at public demand, he considered killing off his detective.
The magic and escape were gone. Sherlock Holmes became another obligation not
unlike the practice of medicine itself. He turned to mysticism and science
fiction, but the public would not have it. They wanted Holmes.

Today these adventures provide a
wonderful escape for the contemporary reader. And that, of course, is what
detective fiction is largely about: a chance to forget one’s own problems and
take on those of the royal house of Bohemia or the Red-Headed League.

In that spirit, let us take down our
pipes and deerstalker caps, and join the world’s greatest consulting detective
as he sets off on another adventure down the gas-lit streets of Edwardian
England. This time he proposes to cook someone’s goose. Or will he? Take a
gander at “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.”

I had called upon my friend Sherlock
Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing
him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple
dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of
crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the
couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and
disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several
places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that
the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.

“You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps
I interrupt you.”

“Not at all. I am glad to have a
friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial
one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat—”but there are points
in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of
instruction.”

I seated myself in his armchair and
warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and
the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that,
homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is
the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the
punishment of some crime.”

“No. no. No crime,” said Sherlock
Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will
happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within
the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a
swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take
place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and
bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.”

“So much so,” I remarked, “that of
the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely
free of any legal crime.”

“Precisely. You allude to my attempt
to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary
Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have
no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You
know Peterson, the commissionaire?”

“Yes.”

“It is to him that this trophy
belongs.”

“It is his hat.”

“No, no; he found it. Its owner is
unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an
intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon
Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt,
roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about
four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest
fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way
homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a
tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung
over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out
between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked
off the man’s hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself, and swinging
it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed
forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at
having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform
rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid
the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road.
The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in
possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the
shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose.”

“Which surely he restored to their owner?”

“My dear fellow, there lies the
problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs. Henry Baker’ was printed upon a small card
which was tied to the bird’s left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H.
B.’ are legible upon the lining of this hat; but as there are some thousands of
Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy
to restore lost property to any of them.”

“What, then, did Peterson do?”

“He brought round both hat and goose
to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of
interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs
that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten
without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil
the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the
unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.”

“Did he not advertise?”

“No.”

“Then, what clue could you have as
to his identity?”

“Only as much as we can deduce.”

“From his hat?”

“Precisely.”

“But you are joking. What can you
gather from this old battered felt?”

“Here is my lens. You know my
methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who
has worn this article?”

I took the tattered object in my
hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of
the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of
red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but. as
Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side. It was
pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the
rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places,
although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches
by smearing them with ink.

“I can see nothing,” said I, handing
it back to my friend.

“On the contrary, Watson, you can
see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too
timid in drawing your inferences.”

“Then, pray tell me what it is that
you can infer from this hat?”

He picked it up and gazed at it in
the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. “It is
perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there
are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent
at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual
is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly
well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil
days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral
retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to
indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may
account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”

“My dear Holmes!”

“He has, however, retained some
degree of self-respect,” he continued, disregarding my remonstrance. “He is a
man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely,
is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few
days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts
which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely
improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.”