The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1892

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“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” Summary

On Christmas Eve, a police commissioner intervenes in a street altercation during which a man loses his hat and his goose. The policeman leaves the hat with Holmes and takes the bird home for dinner. However, the following day he returns as his wife discovered a huge diamond inside the bird. The jewel turns out to be the blue carbuncle, an infamous priceless stone, stolen from its owner’s hotel room while a plumber was fixing a loose grate. The robbery was discovered by the hotel attendant who calls the police and reports his suspicions about the plumber. The worker has a criminal record, so he is quickly arrested despite the lack of evidence.

When the jewel is brought to him, Holmes decides to discover how a stolen stone could end up inside a goose. He puts out an ad in the newspaper about the lost possessions and soon a man comes to claim them. He has no knowledge of the jewel but tells the detective he got the bird from a tavern owner. Holmes and Watson then visit the tavern and eventually follow leads to a market stall and intercept another man interested in discovering the whereabouts of the goose. He turns out to be the hotel attendant and the real thief. He took the diamond, knowing that the plumber would be suspected, and hid it inside one of the geese his sister raises on her farm. However, she sold the bird that same day and he has been trying to track down its whereabouts in the hope of retrieving the jewel. Holmes decides to let him go in exchange for not testifying against the plumber.

“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” Analysis

This is one of the more typical detective stories in the collection. It contains an unusual case, a wrongly accused man, and an unexpected twist at the end. It also depicts another instance of Holmes’s unique brand of justice. As long as no innocents are harmed, he tends to be very lenient towards inexperienced criminals. According to modern law, he becomes an accessory after the fact, but since he presumably plans on returning the jewel, the crime in his mind is nullified and the real victim, the plumber, will be released. Instead of condemning the attendant to prison, an experience that would ruin him for life, Holmes judges there is no real gain in bringing the matter to the police.

The criminal in this story is also particularly pitiful. After being discovered, he exclaims, “My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me! God help me!” (145). The thief’s loss of composure makes him seem like less of a threat than John Clay from “The Red-Headed League,” who showed no weakness or remorse. By depicting the hotel attendant as somewhat pathetic, the story prepares the readers for the resolution and makes it more likely they would agree with Holmes’s decision.

While the detective’s actions are certainly merciful, his willingness to let loose a criminal does raise questions. His belief that the attendant will never again try to steal is based solely on his reading of the man’s character. After getting away with this crime, he could conceivably try again sometime in the future. The harm to the plumber’s reputation and mental well-being is also not considered, let alone the jewel owner’s feelings on the matter. These considerations highlight Holmes’s tendency to dismiss the human aspect of his cases in favor of focusing on the puzzle as a means to entertain himself.