Holmes for the Holidays [Anthology]

251 Pages·2016·1.41 MB·English

by  Greenberg Martin H

Table of Contents
Cover
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
The Watch Night Bell
The Sleuth of Christmas Past
A Scandal in Winter
The Adventure in Border Country
The Adventure of the Three Ghosts
The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist
The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed
The Yuletide Affair
The Adventure of the Christmas Tree
The Adventure of the Christmas Ghosts
The Thief of Twelfth Night
The Italian Sherlock Holmes
The Christmas Client
The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet
About the Authors
Back cover
Cover

HOLMES
FOR THE
HOLIDAYS
EDITED BY
Martin H. Greenberg,
Jon L. Lellenberg, and
Carol-Lynn Waugh
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK
HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime hardcover edition / November 1996
Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / November 1998
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Martin Greenberg, Carol-Lynn Rossel Waugh,
and Jon L. Lellenberg.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-425-16754-2
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published
by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design are trademarks
belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 987654321
Scanned and Proofed by eBookMan V1.0
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment to Dame Jean Conan Doyle for permission to use the
Sherlock Holmes characters.
"The Watch Night Bell" copyright 1996 by Anne Perry.
"The Sleuth of Christmas Past" copyright 1996 by Barbara Paul.
"A Scandal in Winter" copyright 1996 by Gillian Linscott.
"The Adventure in Border Country" copyright 1996 by Gwen
Moffat.
"The Adventure of the Three Ghosts" copyright 1996 by Loren
D. Estleman.
"The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist" copyright 1996 by
Jon L. Breen.
"The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed" copyright 1996
by J. N. Williamson.
"The Yuletime Affair" copyright 1996 by John Stoessel.
"The Adventure of the Christmas Tree" copyright 1996 by
William L. DeAndrea.
"The Adventure of the Christmas Ghosts" copyright 1996 by Bill
Crider.
"The Thief of Twelfth Night" copyright 1996 by Carole Nelson
Douglas.
"The Italian Sherlock Holmes" copyright 1996 by Reginald Hill.
"The Christmas Client" copyright 1996 by Edward D. Hoch.
"The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet" copyright 1996 by
Carolyn Wheat.
Contents

Cover
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
The Watch Night Bell
The Sleuth of Christmas Past
A Scandal in Winter
The Adventure in Border Country
The Adventure of the Three Ghosts
The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist
The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed
The Yuletide Affair
The Adventure of the Christmas Tree
The Adventure of the Christmas Ghosts
The Thief of Twelfth Night
The Italian Sherlock Holmes
The Christmas Client
The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet
About the Authors
Back cover
Introduction
Sherlock Holmes is an admirable man, but whatever coziness he possesses
comes mostly from the Baker Street scene— the light and warmth inside holding
the cold and dark outside at bay, Mrs. Hudson hurrying upstairs with food and
drink at the tinkling of a bell, and of course comfortable old Dr. Watson in the
armchair before the fire, reading the latest issue of The Lancet or writing up one
of Holmes's cases for the Strand magazine. Perhaps Holmes is hard at work
looking up some telltale data in his commonplace books, or conducting an
experiment in his chemical corner that will prove a man's innocence or guilt. Or
perhaps he is unoccupied at the moment, and at leisure, a condition he detested
—moodily passing the time by playing the violin until a frantic knock at the door
and rush of footsteps up the stairs brings him his next client and case.
It is easy for us to imagine Holmes and Watson that way. It is far less easy for
those who have read the stories carefully to imagine much more jollification at
Baker Street. Not even at Christmastime, for Holmes and Watson are proper,
reserved English professional gentlemen of the late Victorian age. They address
each other by their surnames, not their Christian names, they observe the
proprieties of their era and class, they maintain a reticence about their personal
lives and feelings that is scarcely understandable to the modern world of today,
where public display of feeling and emotion is hard to avoid even by those who
would wish to.
So it is with the Christmas adventure of Sherlock Holmes that we have from Dr.
Watson's pen. "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" appeared in the Strand
magazine for January 1892. And it was, as Christopher Morley, founder of the
Baker Street Irregulars, Holmes's greatest admirers, wrote, "a Christmas Story
without slush." It takes place not on Christmas itself, but two days after, and
Watson, married at the time and living elsewhere, stops by Baker Street to call
upon his friend and wish him "the compliments of the season." Just that: the
compliments of the season. No caroling, no gaudily wrapped presents, "no
lachrymose Yule-tide yowling," to quote Morley again. Even at Christmastime,
their sense of restraint is well in place, and Watson never lets the Christmas spirit
that animates this story get out of hand.
Even so—and perhaps because of that—"The Blue Carbuncle" is one of the best
tales in the Holmesian Canon. There is a lost hat, from which Holmes is able to
make the most striking deductions about its owner. There is a Christmas goose,
lost along with the hat the night before by the unknown man, that turns up with a
precious jewel in its crop. And there is the certainty, when the owner of the hat
and goose shows up to claim them, that he knows nothing whatever about the
blue carbuncle, which has been stolen from the Countess of Morcar at the Hotel
Cosmopolitan. The goose came from the goose club at the Alpha Inn, near the
British Museum. And so, through the cold and frosty streets of London that night
go Holmes and Watson, on a journey of detection that takes them to the Alpha
Inn, Covent Garden market, and back to Baker Street before the mystery is
solved, and an innocent man, in jail accused of the theft, is set free.
The true culprit is also set free, by Sherlock Holmes. "After all, Watson, I am not
retained by the police to supply their deficiencies," says he. "Besides, it is the
season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical
problem, and its solution is its own reward."
Sherlockian scholars love to analyze Watson's stories, and "The Blue Carbuncle"
is no exception, particularly since it seems to harken back to earlier Christmases.
When Holmes and Watson visit the Alpha Inn to learn where its goose club
procured its birds, they depart with a remarkably hearty farewell to the pub's
proprietor, from Holmes, of all people. "Here's your good health, landlord, and
prosperity to your house!" One scholar has pointed out that the Alpha Inn—
believed to be the Museum Tavern, at the corner of Museum and Great Russell
streets—may have been Holmes's own local during his early years in London,
for he had lived in that neighbourhood then, he told Watson elsewhere, in
Montague Street around the corner from the British Museum. Holmes was in
active practice as the world's first consulting detective for twenty-three years,
and Watson was associated with him for seventeen of those, but several of them
were before Watson came onto the scene—solitary years for the young Holmes,
living in a rented room there in Bloomsbury, studying the various aspects of his
unshaped profession at the British Museum and at St. Bartholomew's Hospital,
and learning on foot the geography of the world's largest city. Holmes was alone
and poor then, and Christmas is the time of year, Charles Dickens tells us in "A
Christmas Carol," when want is most keenly felt. Perhaps a few of his first
Christmases in London were spent at the Alpha Inn nearby, where some
company could be borrowed, and cheer purchased, for an hour or two at a time.
It was only later, when Watson came along, and they took rooms together in
Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson saw to their wants, that Christmas was no longer
as solitary as it once had been.
"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" is a Christmas story that has stood the
friends of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson in good stead for over a
century now. But there is no denying the fact that it is only one Christmas of the
many that the two great friends and companions shared. Perhaps the stories in
this volume are some of the others.

Jon Lellenberg Christmas 1995
The Watch Night Bell
Anne Perry
My friend and colleague Sherlock Holmes had not a high regard for the logical
nature of women. Indeed he considered their virtues to lie in an entirely different
area, one with which he personally had little to do, being a man not attracted to
the domestic life. He was a creature with a most brilliant intellect which was
constantly in need of stimulation, or he fell into a state bordering upon
melancholy. He felt that women tended to see everything on a personal and
emotional level. The abstract joys of pure reason lay beyond their grasp.
Indeed if the young woman who sat in our rooms in Baker Street that chilly
morning three days before Christmas was typical of her sex, then I could offer
him no argument. She was everything he found most irritating: small, almost
childlike in stature, fussy of dress and manner. She fiddled constantly with her
fur muff, stroking it as if it were an animal, plucking at it with her fingers. Worst
of all, she seemed unable to sustain a thread of thought or finish a sentence, but
was constantly interrupting herself.
I could see Holmes growing close to losing his temper. He had agreed to see her
because he was bored, and her letter had indicated an extreme urgency and peril.
Our visitor had so far told us of the delights of Christmas in Northumberland, the
crisp snow, the roaring fires, the magnificent countryside. She had described the
excellence of the larder and the cellar, and the general festivities of Christmas.
She had interrupted herself to mention the stables and the conservatory, and the
pleasantness of the gardens—even at this time of year.
Finally Holmes could bear it no longer.
"Miss Bayliss!" he said levelly. "Be good enough to come to the point! So far
you have described an idyllic situation. What is it you fear? If all is as you say,
what brings you to London? Above all, what brings you to me?"
She looked quite startled. "Oh! Oh, dear. I am so sorry, Mr. Holmes. You have
been most kind, and I have been so upset I have rambled on and wasted your
time, without properly explaining myself!" She gazed at him, full of apology.
"The point, Miss Bayliss," he said with barely concealed impatience.
She began to look very distressed, her hands plucking at her muff, her bosom
rising and falling rapidly. I wished to offer her some refreshment—perhaps in
part to distract her mind from her anxiety and help her express herself, for she