The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The only Sherlock Holmes Christmas story
About The Blue Carbuncle
Sherlock Holmes was not a natural Santa, ‘Eliminate the impossible my young friend. No stout fellow in a red suit is coming down your chimney.’
There was one seasonal case for him, though, and it ranks with the best. Who could resist a mystery involving a ‘disreputable felt hat’?
Opening below with link to free e-text of full story below
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.
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.”
From The Blue Carbuncle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892)
Complete text is available here and dramatisation by the Quicksilver Theatre here — both free to access. Teaching worksheet here
