The Blue Carbuncle

Christmas is coming, and the Blue Carbuncle is gone. The Countess of Morcar's famous jewel has vanished, and the police have their man in John Horner, a plumber with a criminal record who swears he never touched it. He is arrested just before the holiday, and everything points his way. Holmes is not asked to help. He simply becomes interested.

The case turns on a goose. Peterson, one of Holmes's doormen, comes into possession of a Christmas goose that happens to contain the missing jewel, and Holmes sets to work with the patience of a man who has suddenly found his favourite kind of puzzle. The goose itself is a wonderful piece of misdirection, a bird with no idea what it is carrying. From an old hat he reads the story of the goose's owner and follows the bird to a poultry dealer. There he waits for the real thief to walk into his trap. The thief is a servant, James Ryder by name, who stole the stone and framed the plumber in the same movement.

Ken Campbell makes Ryder properly miserable, the sort of crook who cannot enjoy his luck. Desmond McNamara's Horner is the decent man caught in the machinery, and Rosalind Knight is a suitably grand Countess of Morcar. Ros Simmons, Amelda Brown, Brian Miller and Frank Mills complete the cast. David Carson directs, with the writing shared between John Hawkesworth, Paul Finney and Arthur Conan Doyle. Michael Cox produced, and Ray Goode's cinematography catches a London of frost and lamplight.

There is a good reason this one feels like a Christmas story. The jewel has a dark history, shown in the programme's opening credits, but the chase itself runs warmer than most, and it ends without a body to weigh on the season. It is a case solved more by patience than by running, and Holmes seems to enjoy that. That is a small mercy in itself.