The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, Part XXI by David Marcum

Author:David Marcum [Marcum, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, Mystery, murder, Undershaw, sir Arthur Conan Doyle, short story collection, stepping stones school, deduction, Christmas, church, Notting Hill, Nativity scene, burglary, British Museum, mummy, Scepter of Anubis, Ancient Egypt, Vizier, collector, curse, scorpion, poison, Freemason, Fitzrovia, religion, English Freemasonry, fishmonger, dancing men, kidnapping, fog
ISBN: 9781787055711
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2020-07-09T04:00:00+00:00

The Adventure of the Chocolate Pot

by Hugh Ashton

Sherlock Holmes was a man of many interests—indeed, I do not recall ever making the acquaintance of any man whose breadth of vision and intellectual scope extended so widely. Nor were these interests of a superficial nature, but in the majority of cases the knowledge that he acquired was of such a depth that he might have passed as a professor of the subject, employed in one of our Universities.

Sometimes these interests were of a passing nature, lasting for only a few months, but in that short space of time, he would have become an expert in that field, and the comprehension thus obtained would remain with him, often to be used in the solution of a case many years later.

An example of this was his interest in the markings of bullets which had been discharged from a firearm. Holmes was of the opinion, which he attempted to verify, that the rifling within the barrels of guns, though theoretically identical, being of the same model and sourced from the same manufacturer, nonetheless exhibited individual characteristics, much as do the whorls and loops of our fingerprints, as theorized by Faulds in his paper of 1880, and with whom Holmes was in later communication.

However, to Scotland Yard, Holmes’s theories on the individuality of bullets remained an unproven theory and he was unable to convince even the officer whom he considered to be the finest of the official force, Inspector Stanley Hopkins, of the validity of his suppositions.

Another of Holmes’s multifarious interests in which displayed an uncommon skill was acting. He informed me once that he had entertained a notion to become an actor, but that his family had disapproved of his choice of future career.

“However,” he informed me one evening as we were sitting in our chairs following dinner, “I took part in several amateur productions at University, and secretly took some instruction in the dramatic art from a professional actor. Much of what I learned, principally that relating to the stage and the theatre, was of little interest to me in my present profession, but some of the fundamental principles of the thespian art, such as how to inhabit another’s character, and the mechanical aspects of disguise and so on, have never left me, and indeed have proved of the greatest value to me in my work.”

I had many opportunities to witness the skill with which he made use of this past instruction, and to my mind, the case I am about to describe is one of the finest of such incidents, as well as demonstrating his ability to acquire a high degree of expertise in a subject at short notice.

The case had its beginning one spring morning when London was covered by a fine grey mist, rather than the yellow fogs that had plagued us all winter. Though it was not actually raining, it was a day that a Scotchman would describe as “dreich”, and the coat of the client who sat in

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