The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part XXVIII
David MarcumVolume 28 of the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. Book 1 of 3 of the second Christmas Adventures trilogy.
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXVIII
More Christmas Adventures (1869-1888)
David Marcum
“It arrived upon Christmas morning…”
Sherlock Holmes – “The Blue Carbuncle”
Dr. John H. Watson met Sherlock Holmes on January 1st, 1881, in a laboratory at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where Holmes, not-quite twenty-seven years old, was taking advantage of the empty facilities to conduct medico-legal experiments related to blood identification. Watson, himself only twenty-eight, had been grievously wounded at the Battle of Maiwand just a little over five months before, and during his subsequent recovery, he’d nearly died from enteric fever, also known as typhoid. By the time he made the month-long journey back to England on the troopship Orontes, he was still just barely recovered, and his mood was certainly grim as he faced an uncertain future.
Watson wrote that he had “neither kith nor kin in England”, and though it isn’t recorded, one can only imagine how bleak was the Christmas of 1880 for this poor veteran, living on his meagre wound pension, and getting through every long dull day in an unfriendly city while residing in a small unfriendly hotel off the Strand. Unexpectedly running into an old friend, Stamford, in the bar of the