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The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

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Brief overview

Holmes traces the Countess's stolen blue carbuncle from a lost Christmas goose to hotel attendant James Ryder.

  1. A battered hat told Holmes the owner's whole declineCubic capacity, a three-year-old hat of the best quality, ink over stains and five tallow marks gave intellect, lost fortune, self-respect and no gas.
  2. The goose carried a gem worth twenty times the £1,000 rewardHolmes says the thousand pounds offered is not within a twentieth part of the market price of the blue carbuncle.
  3. Holmes frees Ryder instead of sending him to courtHe calls it commuting a felony but possibly saving a soul, since the terrified Ryder will not go wrong again.
Executive Summary AI
  • On the second morning after Christmas Watson finds Holmes studying a battered hat that Peterson, the commissionaire, picked up with a goose after a stranger fled a scuffle on Tottenham Court Road at four o'clock on Christmas morning; a card on the bird's leg read Mrs. Henry Baker.
  • From the hat alone Holmes deduces that its owner is intellectual, was well-to-do three years ago but has gone down in the world, probably drinks, is middle-aged with grizzled hair anointed with lime cream, and has no gas laid on at home.
  • Peterson bursts in with the Countess of Morcar's blue carbuncle, which his wife found in the goose's crop; it was stolen at the Hotel Cosmopolitan on the 22nd of December, carries a thousand-pound reward, and the plumber John Horner has been sent to the Assizes for it.
  • Henry Baker answers Holmes's advertisement, proves to know nothing, and names the Alpha Inn goose club, so Holmes and Watson follow the birds through the landlord to Breckenridge of Covent Garden, whose ledger, won by a fiver bet, shows twenty-four geese from Mrs. Oakshot, 117 Brixton Road.
  • James Ryder, head attendant of the Hotel Cosmopolitan, confesses that with the maid Catherine Cusack he framed Horner and forced the stone down a barred-tail goose at his sister's, only for the wrong bird to go to market; Holmes lets him run, saying it is the season of forgiveness.
Key Quote
“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.”
— Sherlock Holmes
Key Quote
“A man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
— Sherlock Holmes
Key Quote
“They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed.”
— Sherlock Holmes

Transcript

0:00 VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE I had called upon my friend, Sherlock Holmes, upon the second morning after Christmas,
0:30 with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season.
0:33 He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach
0:38 upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand.
0:44 Beside the couch was a wooden chair,
0:46 and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat,
0:51 much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat
0:57 of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of
1:01 examination. You are engaged, said I. Perhaps I interrupt i interrupt you not at all i'm 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 even of instruction. I seated myself in his arm-chair, and warmed my hands before his
1:26 crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice-crystals.
1:32 "'I suppose,' I remarked, "'that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked
1:38 on to it, that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the
1:42 punishment of some crime.' "'No, no, no crime, said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. Only one of those whimsical little incidents
1:49 which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within
1:53 the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of
1:58 humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a
2:03 little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.
2:11 So much so, I remarked, that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes,
2:17 three have been entirely free of any legal crime. Precisely, you allude to my attempt to recover
2:22 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 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
2:50 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,
3:06 is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification, and was making his way
3:11 homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man,
3:17 walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder.
3:22 As he reached the corner of Goode Street, a row broke out between this
3:26 stranger and a little knot of ruffs. One of the latter knocked off the man's hat, on which he
3:31 raised his stick to defend himself, and swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind
3:36 him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants, but the man,
3:42 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
3:50 of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the
3:56 appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of
4:01 the spoils of victory, in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable
4:05 Christmas goose, which surely he restored to their owner.
4:10 My dear fellow, there lies the problem.
4:12 It is true that for Mrs. Henry Baker was printed upon a small card which had been tied to the
4:18 bird's left leg, and it is also true that the initials H.B. are legible upon the lining
4:23 of this hat.
4:24 But as there are some
4:25 thousands of bakers and some hundreds of Henry bakers in this city of ours, it's not easy to
4:31 restore lost property to any one of them. What then did Peterson do? He brought round both hat

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