Holmes: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet

/ Alex Good

This has the feel of a more traditional mystery, even though there wasn’t much of a tradition yet. A wealthy banker is given a beryl coronet, one of the “most precious public possessions of the empire,” as collateral for a loan. Not trusting to keep it in his bank’s safe, he takes it home with him and locks it in his dresser. Because that’s the kind of thing you did back in the day. He also makes sure to tell his niece and wastrel son what he’s doing. That night he discovers his son apparently in the act of stealing the coronet, and has him arrested by the police as a few gems from the coronet have gone missing.

After being told the story, Holmes is convinced that the son is innocent. He then proceeds to solve the case by the usual method of getting out his magnifying glass to examine evidence like footprints, going out on mysterious nighttime excursions, and employing “an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” With regard to that final point, once again I didn’t find this maxim very persuasive, as Holmes never excludes what is impossible but only what is highly unlikely. Few things, after all, are impossible. But as I’ve criticized this maxim enough already, I won’t say more about it here.

I think it’s pretty obvious to most readers what’s going on, as once you’ve excluded the most likely suspect all we’re left with is the niece, who is an emotional girl with a habit of giving herself away. She’s not a bad person, but betrays her uncle the banker because she’s got a crush on a dissolute rake named Burnwell who is in need of money. She loves unwisely and too well. Or as Holmes unhelpfully explains to the uncle, “I have no doubt that she loved you, but there are women in whom the love of a lover extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.” I mean, someone has to come first.

It’s a pretty good little mystery, even if nothing stands out about it. I did like how the rake who seduces the niece throws away the gems to a fence for such a low sum. No wonder he’s in such dire straits financially; he doesn’t know the value of anything. I’m afraid Mary has made a bad choice, which inverts the usual way one of these stories ends. And where is poor Mary now? “I think that we may safely say,” returned Holmes, “that she is wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient punishment.” Yikes!

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