A Bauble in Scandinavia

by James Lovegrove

For most of the winter of 1890 Sherlock Holmes was in subdued mood, morose and taciturn. I did not yet know it, but he was brooding on the problem of Professor Moriarty, whose malign influence over our nation and over Holmes himself would reach its apex - and climax - the subsequent spring. Other affairs troubled my friend’s mind, including an engagement by the French government to attend to matters of supreme political significance, but principally, as I now see in hindsight, it was Moriarty who cast a shadow over him and dampened whatever pleasure the season might have brought him.

During Advent I took it upon myself to call by at 221b Baker Street as often as I was able, my medical caseload and my domestic demands permitting. I attempted the best I could to cajole Holmes out of his gloom. “Surely,” I would say, “you can allow a chink of Yuletide light to pierce this shroud of darkness which surrounds you.” In response, all I would receive was a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders and a twitching moue of the mouth, as if I had suggested he fly to the moon and eat green cheese there. He was imperturbable and inscrutable. My efforts to elevate his spirits rebounded like bullets off armour plating.

What a contrast with Christmas 1889, when he and I had memorably been engaged in the pursuit of a villain who had concealed a stolen jewel in the crop of a goose, a jaunty episode I have chronicled as “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”. Then, Holmes had been particularly light of heart, even to the point of letting the felon go free in the hope that forgiveness, rather than punishment, would be the salvation of the man’s soul. I wondered whether the Holmes of late 1890 would have been quite so lenient.

As Christmas Day itself loomed, I was loath to visit him any more. Until he bucked himself out of the trough he was in, how did it benefit me to seek out his company? He, it was clear, had no wish to consort with me. Why, therefore, might I wish to consort with him?

It was my wife who insisted I should drag myself over to 221b on Christmas Eve, contrary to my own desires. I would far rather have stayed at our cosy home - which she had adorned in splendid festive finery, including numerous paper chains and a heavily ornament-bedecked tree - and enjoyed a night in by the fire, reading a book and indulging in pleasant conversation. My dear Mary, however, was adamant that I not spurn Holmes. Thus, with the utmost unwillingness, I traipsed through the gas-lit dark from Paddington to Baker Street, bearing a gift.

My friend, as had become his wont, did not seem pleased to see me. If anything he was sullener than ever. I found him ensconced in his armchair by the window, legs drawn up, frowning intently over a telegram.

“Watson. What brings you here this cold, blustery evening?”

“Nothing,” said I, “save the inclination to offer you a small token in keeping with the time of year.”

“Hmm? Oh, a present. Yes. Put it there, would you?” He wafted a hand idly at the dining table before resuming his perusal of the telegram.

I laid the package, which my wife had wrapped very elegantly, where indicated. Inside was a calabash pipe. Holmes was wedded to his briar and his clay, with the occasional diversion to his cherry-wood when he was in a disputatious frame of mind, but I fancied he might find the large bowl and curved stem of a calabash congenial. I had expected him to tender some sort of reciprocal offering, but there was, it would appear, none.

“What do you have there?” I enquired. “The germ of a new case, maybe?”

“This?” He tapped the telegram. “Not as such. Nothing that need concern you, old fellow.”

“You are quite absorbed by it.”

“It exerts a fascination, I confess.”

“Then tell me more.”

“So that you can make it the basis of another of your trifling little sketches?”

“I am merely expressing polite curiosity,” I said, bristling somewhat. “You could do me the courtesy of satisfying it.”

“Well, since you insist. The telegram in fact pertains to an investigation which is already in train. I have a northern Scandinavian client whose business is in danger of suffering a grave setback.”

“You have mentioned, more than once, that you are presently being of assistance to the Royal Family of Scandinavia. Is this related to that case?”

Holmes did not reply, instead fixing his keen gaze on the slip of paper. He ran his forefinger along the words, his lips pursing slightly.

“Would you care to read it aloud?” I persisted. “Perhaps I might offer some insight.”

He gave vent to a brief and ever so scornful laugh. “You overrate your usefulness, Watson, or else underrate my mental powers.”

At that, I picked up my hat and quit the apartment. I do not mind reporting that I was in high dudgeon. I do regret to relate, however, that I was short-tempered with Mary when I got home and that I went to bed thinking some fairly uncharitable thoughts about Sherlock Holmes.

I awoke on Christmas morning still chagrined, still resentful, and although I strove to remain civil and good-humoured over breakfast, I failed. Mary, indefatigably gracious when I was disgruntled or ill at ease, urged me to return to 221b forthwith and make amends.

“I will not have you full of gripe and crotchetiness on this day of all days, John,” she said. “Go and clear the air between you and Mr. Holmes. It is the only way I shall get to enjoy Christmas.”

I refused, but she was determined. Like the tide eroding the shore, she wore me down, so that by eight o’clock I was exiting the house, clad in Ulster, cravat, and gloves, and wending my way through the London streets. The city was quiet, the pavements empty, the roadways bare of traffic. It was the only day of the year that the capital’s constant hubbub dwindled and peace prevailed. The sky sent down a sleety drizzle which, had the temperature been a couple of degrees lower, would have been transfigured into a light snowfall.

I rapped on the front door of my former address, and Mrs. Hudson ushered me in with an expression of surprise. “Doctor, I was not expecting you.”

“I did not anticipate being here. Your lodger is in, I presume.”

“No. He left an hour ago, and in something of a hurry, too.”

“Where might he have gone? Whatever could have summoned him from home on Christmas Day?”

“I’m sure I have no idea. Mr. Holmes is a law unto himself, you know that as well as I. He may have been exercising some whim.”

“Or pursuing a lead in a case. He gave you no indication as to his destination?”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor as to when he might return?”

“None.”

“How singular.”

“You sound concerned, Doctor.”

“A little.”

“What if you were to look about his rooms? There is a chance you might find some clue to his whereabouts there.”

“It would seem impertinent.”

“But if you are worried about him...”

I assented to her proposal. I could not put my finger on why I thought Holmes might be in jeopardy. I knew only that his behaviour had lately been off-kilter and that, with his tendency towards obsessiveness and single-mindedness - towards mania, even - he could often be his own worst enemy.

Upstairs, I cast an eye around the sitting room. I noted that my gift still sat on the table exactly where I had placed it. It had not been touched. Holmes’s breakfast, which Mrs. Hudson had laid out for him, likewise had not been touched.

“He said nothing to you, either this morning or last night, regarding an appointment today?”

“He said nothing to me at all this morning, other than the briskest of goodbyes as he went out the door. As for last night... Well, I do recall him making a comment that I found queer. Queer even by Mr. Holmes’s lights. I was taking away his supper tray and he said, ‘Mrs. Hudson, I shall just give the ashes a riddle, shall I?’ He was kneeling by the hearth at the time with the poker in his hand, preparing to scrape at the grate, and I thought to myself why make such a statement? It was obvious that that was what he was doing, riddling the ashes. Why draw unnecessary attention to the fact?”

“Of late he has been acting rather oddly.”

“You would be the better judge of that than I. I could swear, though, that he had been busy doing something else in the fireplace immediately before I entered. He looked... furtive, I suppose the word is, and all that talk of riddling was to divert my attention from some other deed.”

“Furtiveness? That is not like Holmes. He can be secretive, but never furtive.”

I bent beside the hearth and examined the cold ashes in the fireplace. It seemed unlikely that I might find therein some explanation to Holmes’s abrupt-seeming departure, but I felt it was worth a look. Almost instantly I spied a scrap of paper standing proud amongst the clinker and the fragments of charred wood. It was the corner of a telegram, and I could not help but assume it belonged to the selfsame telegram which had so preoccupied him yesterday.

I plucked the scorched remnant out and held it up to the light to examine it. Just three words were legible, printed out in the telegrapher’s neat hand:

ICE

TRADE

RD

Mrs. Hudson read over my shoulder, and together we puzzled over what these meagre morsels of data might signify.

“‘ICE’?” I said. “Holmes referred to a ‘northern Scandinavian client’ in connection with the telegram. Ice is undoubtedly a feature of Scandinavian climes almost all year round. ‘TRADE’ is less easily analysed. It might, I suppose, refer to an exchange of some sort, of goods or perhaps of contraband.”

“What about ‘RD’?” said Mrs. Hudson. “Might that be someone’s initials?”

“Or the common abbreviation for ‘road’, shortened here so as to save the sender of the telegram a penny or two. Each of the words lies at the end of its respective line, but we must not infer that each is complete. The ‘RD’ could be the final two letters of a longer word.”

“By that token so might ‘ICE’ and ‘TRADE’.”

“A good point. Were Holmes here and the telegram previously unknown to him, by now he would have extrapolated the entirety of its message from the scant available evidence, and doubtless also the sender’s occupation, hair colour and preferred brand of snuff.”

“It is unlike you to sound so churlish. Has Mr. Holmes done something to cause offence?”

“He has, but now my anxiety overrides my feelings of affront. I believe I ought to-”

I broke off, slapping my forehead as inspiration struck.

“Mrs. Hudson, there is one obvious interpretation. I am amazed I did not think of it sooner. As you yourself just said, ‘ICE’ and ‘TRADE’ might also be the ends of words, like ‘RD’. What if those words are ‘POLICE’ and ‘LESTRADE’?”

“That would also account for the ‘RD’, would it not?”

“How so?”

“‘SCOTLAND YARD’, Doctor.”

I made haste to Scotland Yard. I could scarcely believe I was chasing so slender a thread. There was no guarantee I had intuited correctly the import of the telegram from those few isolated characters. In the absence of any other course of action, however, it was all I could do.

That Inspector Lestrade was on duty was perhaps predictable. He was unmarried and faithfully devoted to his job. Few others of his brethren would have given up their Christmas Day to sit at their desks, but Lestrade seemed positively glad to be there. I imagine he found it preferable to staying at home, alone, while all the world around him celebrated in the bosom of family and friends.

“Gone, you say, Dr. Watson?”

“Without warning, without explanation, without trace.”

“You are his great intimate, but even I know that Mr. Holmes is liable to vanish at a moment’s notice. He is as contrary and unpredictable as a cat. What makes you so certain the reason for this absence is sinister?”

“He has not been himself in recent days. He has been... difficult.”

“Well now, it’s funny you should say that,” remarked the sallow, rat-faced official. “Only yesterday he paid us a visit, out of the blue, and I noted then that he seemed distracted. I put it from my mind, thinking it just another facet of a complex personality.”

“In what manner distracted?”

“He had called to see Athelney Jones and discuss the affair of the Red-Headed League. The case is shortly coming to trial, where I suspect the jury will have no trouble finding John Clay and his accomplice guilty as charged, and Holmes averred that he had a couple of minor details to clear up. Inspector Jones was not in, however, so I had the pleasure of his company, but not for long. We exchanged pleasantries, but Mr. Holmes’s thoughts were elsewhere. He kept muttering to himself.”

“Muttering?”

“Yes. I had the impression he was only vaguely aware of my presence, even as we chatted. He returned again and again to a single short phrase.”

“What was it?”

“‘Greek philosopher in translation’.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was it. Over and over he mumbled those words: ‘Greek philosopher in translation’.”

“But it makes no sense.”

“Did I say it did?” Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. “I am simply relating the facts of the matter. I assumed it pertained to some investigation he was busy with.”

“It must refer to a book. Off the top of my head I can only think of Jowett’s Plato, but there are countless others. I recall from my schooldays an English version of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that induced panicked bewilderment in me every time I opened it, but I cannot remember the translator’s name. Memory has drawn a veil over the trauma.”

“Possibly it was some clue he was mulling over. Hence the repetition.”

“Yes, but if only I could make head or tail of it.”

“You’re sure this telegram referred to me?”

“I am sure of nothing right now, Inspector, other than that I am in the dark, floundering.”

I paused on the front steps of the building, in the lee of the arched doorway, and pondered. How did a Greek philosopher relate to this Scandinavian client of Holmes’s? Was there any connection at all? The randomness of it unsettled me. I began to fear that the balance of my friend’s mind had been severely disturbed. Had overwork placed too immense a burden on him? Had he cracked under the strain? Worse, had he overindulged in cocaine? He was apt to flee into the embrace of the drug both when he was bored and under-stimulated and when he was under pressure. Its detrimental effects on the psyche were well-known to those in my profession, and Holmes was no casual user of it.

I decided to run through the names of every Greek philosopher I could think of, hoping against hope that this might furnish me with an answer to my predicament. The Classics were not my field of expertise, and once past Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, and Zeno I came unstuck.

Then one further name popped into my head: Diogenes.

A quarter-of-an-hour later, I was knocking on the door of a certain exclusive gentlemen’s club on Pall Mall. I could not escape the feeling that I was grasping at straws, but it was better to try something, however desperate, than do nothing.

The Diogenes Club was considerably better attended that day than it had been when I previously passed through its hallowed portals some two years earlier. Its members, united in their antisociality, had flocked there in preference to enduring Christmas at home with their kin. They thronged its panelled libraries and other nooks and chambers, observing the strict code of silence that was the club’s unique and primary rule. The one concession to the season was a single small sprig of holly attached to the front of the reception desk in the hall - more an ironic joke, I felt, than a decoration.

I was soon able to inveigle a meeting with Mycroft Holmes in the Stranger’s Room, the only place on the premises where conversation was allowed. My friend’s corpulent older brother chuckled when he learned of the wayward path that had led me into his presence.

“What an absurd and outré conundrum,” he declared. “‘Greek philosopher in translation’. What on earth is Sherlock up to?”

“You do not think I am right in seeking you out to consult you?”

“On the face of it, you are. The club does of course derive its name from the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, whose espousal of Cynicism, specifically the rejection of social norms, informs our own practices. Furthermore, do you not recall the circumstances under which you and I first met, Doctor?”

“It was during the affair involving the interpreter Melas and the kidnapping of Sophy Kratides.”

“Quite so. Hence the ‘in translation’ part of that quaint ditty - an oblique nod towards Melas. It seems Sherlock is revisiting old haunts, old cases.”

“That rather confirms the unfortunate theory I am forming. Your brother has succumbed to an infirmity of the brain. He is wandering the palaces of his mind, becoming lost.”

“That is as may be,” said Mycroft, “but I meant literally what I said about revisiting old haunts. Yesterday lunchtime Sherlock was in this very room.”

“You don’t say! How did he strike you?”

Mycroft Holmes puffed out a sigh of airy indifference. “Much as he usually is. A touch offhand, I thought.”

“But lucid?”

“More or less.”

“What was his reason for coming here?”

“He gave none. I presume it was to bid me a Merry Christmas, but in the event he neglected to do so. We Holmeses don’t really go in for that type of thing. For the most part, he and I chatted inconsequentially while Sherlock leafed through a newspaper he had brought. That very newspaper there, as it happens.”

He gestured to a folded copy of the Daily Telegraph which lay on the cushions of the window seat. I picked it up to discover that it was open at the advertisements sheet, and moreover that one advertisement had been carefully and emphatically circled in red ink.

“Your brother’s handiwork?” I enquired, pointing to the circle.

“Perhaps. I can’t swear I saw him do it.”

I knew well that Holmes was an aficionado of the advertisement columns, as he was of the agony columns. He liked to clip out certain entries and paste them into his voluminous commonplace books for future reference. They were to him a map of modern civilisation in all its multifarious yearnings and hungers, and frequently afforded him clues to crimes both past and present.

The one he may or may not have singled out as notable read as follows:

Watson - I give generously in northern Scandinavia

“My goodness!” I ejaculated. I was more than a little taken aback to see my own surname printed on the page.

“Whatever is the matter?”

I showed Mycroft Holmes the advertisement. “It is beyond coincidence, surely, that your brother found this when he is currently in the service of a client from northern Scandinavia. Some nefarious conspiracy is afoot.”

“It does seem somewhat irregular,” Mycroft opined.

“But how am I a part of it? Why does my name feature? I am at a loss to account for it. I have no knowledge of the client’s identity. Holmes has vouchsafed to me almost nothing about the person.”

“‘Give generously’ could conceivably be construed as sly criminal slang for causing harm, even murder. Could it be that Sherlock believes you are, without your realising it, in danger?”

“It is more than plausible. It might well explain his recent behaviour. I am the unwitting target of some villain’s plan - an old enemy of ours, maybe - and until such time as he can ensure my safety, Holmes is pushing me aside, out of the line of fire. By warding me off, keeping me at arm’s length, he has been protecting me. With much the same justification, he himself is on the move. He has been crisscrossing London, travelling hither and yon, in order to throw the miscreant off the scent.”

“Then there is logic in his apparent illogicality. Nothing irregular about it whatsoever.”

It was the second time in the space of a minute that Mycroft had uttered the word “irregular”, and all at once a thought occurred to me. I studied the wording of the advertisement again, closely this time. An idea had snagged in my brain, one that was bizarre, fantastical, too ridiculous to be true - and yet the solution lay in front of me, hiding in plain sight, right before my eyes.

The bells of Westminster Abbey were chiming. Londoners from near and far filed through the huge oaken Anglo-Saxon doors for the Christmas service. All were in their best dress and eagerly anticipating a panoply of carols and good cheer.

Lounging beside the entrance to the Abbey was a young man of scarecrow-like appearance and nonchalant bearing, who looked as if he were there just to admire the well-heeled congregants as they paraded by. Really, though, he was eyeing them up with a view to robbing them.

This was how Wiggins, of the Baker Street Irregulars, liked to spend his Christmas Day. The putative leader of Sherlock Holmes’s gang of street Arabs was not woven from the purest cloth. When he was not running errands on Holmes’s behalf, he was wont to revert to criminal ways, supplementing his honest income with ill-gotten gains.

As I approached, I debated inwardly the rationality of my being there. Was I deluded? Or had the advertisement genuinely contained a cryptic intimation, steering me towards Wiggins? Holmes was adept at spotting patterns in things and extricating secret messages from the most abstruse texts and artefacts. What if the advertisement was a coded reference to a threat which imperilled not just my life but that of another of his associates as well? It could be no accident, I thought, that the initial letters of the words “Watson - I give generously in northern Scandinavia” spelled out Wiggins.

No sooner was I within hailing distance of the youngster than I saw him lurch forward from his position and barge shoulder-first into a stooped, elderly gentleman coming the opposite way. Wiggins apologised profusely to the white-haired, bewhiskered figure, and the other assured him that he was unhurt and no harm had been done.

How wrong he was. For I had spied Wiggins’s hand darting inside the man’s overcoat and relieving him of a plump calfskin wallet.

“Hullo!” I cried. “Wiggins! I saw that!”

Wiggins turned towards me, and his face fell, his expression lapsing into consternation and alarm. Without further ado he took to his heels, sprinting off in the direction of the Houses of Parliament and the Thames.

I saw no alternative but to give chase.

He led me a merry dance, did Wiggins. For fully half-an-hour he threaded through byways and backstreets, and several times nearly gave me the slip. He was younger than me by a good couple of decades, but I had a stamina tempered by my service in Afghanistan, and many an afternoon on the rugby pitch. I stayed upon his tail, even though I was panting hard and my lungs burned. After a while I forgot about the elderly gentleman’s wallet or the advertisement. I ran on, consumed by the simple desire not to let this rascal get the best of me.

Up through the West End I pursued him, and into the doctors’ quarter around Harley Street and Wimpole Street, until we were in Marylebone and only a stone’s throw from Baker Street.

That was when I at last had to concede defeat. I slowed to alleviate the ache in my chest and the soreness in my legs, and finally stopped altogether while Wiggins trotted unattainably and irredeemably out of my sight. I braced myself on a railing until I caught my breath. I needed a rest and something restorative, and since I was so close to 221b, I made my way there, planning to throw myself on Mrs. Hudson’s mercy and beg a cup of tea and a snifter of brandy.

To my utter astonishment, who should I see entering the house but the very same elderly gentleman whose pocket Wiggins had picked.

In a matter of seconds I, too, was inside and climbing the seventeen stairs to Holmes’s apartment.

I had a fairly good idea who would be awaiting me within.

I was both correct and incorrect in my surmise.

Sherlock Holmes tugged off the white wig and whiskers of his disguise and straightened up so that he no longer affected the bowed back of old age. He was smiling broadly, his grey eyes twinkling.

Beside him was Wiggins, looking inordinately pleased with himself. Mrs. Hudson was there too, setting the table for dinner. So - and this was the first great surprise - was my old army friend Colonel Hayter, with whom my readers may be familiar from his appearance in the story “The Reigate Squires”. The second great surprise was the presence of my own darling Mary.

Holmes led a prolonged round of applause.

“Well done, old friend,” said he. “Well done indeed.”

Hayter shook my hand warmly, while Mary linked her elbow with mine and planted a brief, affectionate kiss on my cheek.

I shook my head, weary but wise. “You scoundrel, Holmes,” I said. “The nerve of you.”

“Have you had fun?”

“The answer to that is both yes and no. You had me going there, with that sham of yours. The dark mood. The introspection. The disaffectedness.”

“Not wholly feigned, as you will soon learn,” said my friend, “but exaggerated certainly, for effect.”

“And then this whole elaborate rigmarole, starting with the telegram... The chain of clues and puzzles...”

“A game. A charade in which Mrs. Watson, Mrs. Hudson and Wiggins all had roles and played them admirably, as, I trust, did Lestrade and Mycroft. We are expecting the latter two to arrive shortly, by the way. As you can see, Mrs. Hudson has laid places for seven, and that smell you may detect permeating up from the kitchen is the aroma of a turkey of sizeable proportions roasting in the oven. The bird is big enough to satiate six average appetites as well as the exceptional appetite that is my brother’s.”

“I am myself more than a little famished, after the wild goose chase you have sent me on.”

“A metaphorical wild goose chase, compared with the actual one last Christmas.”

“And all in aid of..?”

“Come, come, Watson. Can’t you tell? This has been my Christmas gift to you. A mystery of your very own to solve. How many times have you doggedly accompanied me on an investigation, required to do not much more than be a sounding-board and a Boswell? I devised something that would give you a taste of the limelight for once, putting you centre stage, while I stood, for the most part, in the wings.”

“There is no ‘northern Scandinavian client’, is there?”

“Not unless you count a certain jolly, red-cheeked fellow who resides in the Arctic Circle and makes his annual rounds at this time of year.”

“Holmes, you have a well-buried sentimental streak.”

“You concoct amusing confections out of my cases, Watson. It seems only fair that I should concoct an amusing confection for you in return. In truth, this has been nothing more than a mere Christmas bauble, I think you’ll find. But then there’s your story title, should you ever choose to set this escapade down in print: ‘A Bauble in Scandinavia’. You will doubtless appreciate the wordplay.”

I treasured the memory of that Christmas Day throughout the three years that followed, when Holmes was missing, presumed dead. It kept me warm during some very cold, long, mournful nights. The seven of us round the table - friends, colleagues, kin - and food aplenty and fine wine flowing.

Holmes never did take to that calabash pipe, though.