The Blue Carboy

Arthur Hampton, a tall, burly man in his early 40’s, strong and fit-looking with greying hair and a habitually cheerful expression, jogged up the steps of his club in Grosvenor Square. “Afternoon,” he called to the concierge at the reception desk. “I had a text saying there’s some mail for me.”

“Major Hampton,” the concierge said, looking pleased. “Welcome, sir. Yes, sir. We’ve been holding a package for you, and here’s your post.” The concierge, whose name was Jameson, reached into a numbered pigeonhole mail slot behind the reception desk and passed a large manila envelope to Hampton.

“Thanks, Jimmy,” said Hampton, opening the envelope and glancing at the mail inside. Jameson disappeared into the offices behind the reception desk and returned struggling with a heavy wooden case. As he wrestled it to the desk one of the plastic straps that secured the lid parted with a twang.

Hampton looked up from his mail. “Oh, sorry, let me give you a hand with that,” he said. He hefted the case easily. “This month’s Carboy Club,” he explained.  “Just in time for the holidays.  Wonder what they’ve sent this time.  It’s pot luck, you know,” he added.

“Yes, sir,” said Jameson.  “We have several other members who subscribe.  Will you be staying for dinner tonight?”

“Love to, Jimmy, but there’s no time,” Hampton said.  “I want to fit in a visit to an old friend of mine before I head home, and we’ll have some catching up to do.“  He tucked the case under his arm, trotted back outside and hailed a cab as he stepped onto the pavement. “Baker Street,” he said, climbing in.  “221 Baker Street.”

*

John answered the door and his face broke into a delighted grin.  “Hamp!” he cried.

“Watson the Lionhearted,” Hampton said boisterously, putting out his hand. In the other he held a large, cobalt-coloured bottle of alcohol.

John took his hand in both of his and they shook warmly. “Come in, come in,“ he said, ushering his old friend inside and clapping him on the back.  “Come on up.  Let me take your coat.  What brings you to London?  Are Lizzie and Amy with you?  How are they?”

Hampton laughed.  “I’m batching it today,” he said.  “Had to get some pension business straightened out.  You know how it is.  Always some reason why they can’t pay you, and this time they wanted some forms signed in person.”

John gestured to the leather Le Corbusier seat.  “Sit down, sit down.  Can I get you anything?  Got the shopping done just yesterday, so there’s actually something in.  Tea?  Coffee?”

“I’m all sorted,” Hampton said.  “Thanks.  Actually, I came by to bring you this—” he handed John the bottle of brandy “—as a way to say ‘thank you.’”

John cocked his head.  “For what?”

“’For what?’” Hampton repeated.  “For Lizzie’s health, of course.”

John brushed that aside with a modest gesture.

“No, really,” Hampton said.  “If you hadn’t recommended Doctor Houghton for a second opinion I don’t know where we’d be.  She’d have gone ahead with the surgery and all…We’re so grateful for your advice.  She made me promise to tell you—again.”

“Hamp, really,” John said.  “I just made a phone call.  It was nothing.  Any doctor would have done the same.”

“Ours didn’t.”

“Well, any decent doctor.”  John accepted the bottle and turned it in his hands. The body cylinder of the heavy bottle of cobalt-coloured, opaque glass was adorned just below the shoulder with a gold medallion engraved with the image of a flying goose. “I don’t think I’ve heard of this brand before.  Blue Goose?  Where’d you find it?”

“It’s a subscription,” Hampton said.  “They send four bottles of something every quarter.  Brandy, scotch, cognac:  you know.  Different things each time, but from the same company.  It’s Russian, if I remember correctly. Eastern European, at any rate.  They like their geese, the Russkies.  Blue Goose, Black Goose, Red Goose–depending on what kind of liquor it is.”

“So,” John said, having stowed the bottle in the kitchen and settled in his arm chair.  “How are you both?”

“Great,“ Hampton said.  “Doing great, thanks to you.”

“Stop it.”

“Listen,” Hampton said, lowering his voice.  “What about you?  How are you holding up?”

“Yeah, good.  I’m good,” John said, and thought he probably sounded more or less like he meant it.  “First holiday since…Well.  But there’s always something going on around here, you know.  To keep me busy.”

Downstairs the door slammed.  “John!”

“And here he is now,” John said.  “My flatmate.”

“Oh, right!” Hampton said.  “The detective?  The one on your blog?  I’ve been looking forward to—”

Sherlock sprang up the stairs two at a time and bounded into the room carrying a tattooed human arm.  He had seen the strange coat hanging in the entry and smelt the faint whiff of aftershave, so he knew perfectly well that John had a visitor—Mrs. Hudson didn’t have callers who wore aftershave—but John’s visitors were invariably dull while he himself had a very exciting piece of news.

“John!” he said again as he hit the landing.  “Molly’s got a corpse with three gunshot wounds and a head injury that—”

“Sherlock,” John cut him off with a look.  “Sherlock, this is an old mate of mine from the army.  Major Arthur Hampton.  Hamp, this is my friend Sherlock Holmes.”

Hampton had stood up to greet Sherlock in all good faith, but now he was staring at the severed arm and rapidly losing enthusiasm. He had already put out his hand to shake Sherlock’s, however, and he was a little puzzled how to avoid the contact without seeming rude. “Call me Hamp,” he said.

Sherlock flicked his gaze over Hampton: happily married, came down from Aylesbury, Bucks on the 8:13 a.m. train, non-smoker, British Army retired, one child no more than three years old, probably a girl, made three–no, four stops in London before Baker Street:  Boring.  “I have to refrigerate my arm.”

John didn’t even bat an eye.  “Put it in plastic first,” he called, as Sherlock headed for the kitchen.  He looked at Hampton and said apologetically, “Sorry.  He’s easily distracted.”

“Yeah, listen,” Hampton said, “I’d better be off.  I left the cab waiting with the shopping and I’ve got one more thing to pick up for Lizzie. Besides, I hate to wait until the last train.  There’s one out in an hour, and that will just give me time to pick up her gift.”

“Sure?” John said.  “You can stay for dinner if you like. We’d love to have you.”

“Oh, God, here we go,” Sherlock muttered from the kitchen.

Hampton glanced over, saw him place the plastic-wrapped arm in the refrigerator. “No, no,” he said.  “Lizzie will have supper waiting when I get there, and if I spoil my appetite she’ll take my head off.”

“Well, I’ll see you out then,” John said.  “Give Lizzie my love,” he said at the door.  “Tell her I said ‘Merry Christmas’ and that she’s a saint for putting up with a prat like you all these years.”

Hampton laughed and clapped him on the back.  “You take care of yourself, Lionheart.”

*

John stood at the sink filling a large pot with water when Sherlock emerged from his bedroom and paused in the kitchen doorway. Dressing gown over shirt and trousers, John saw, glancing at him, and barefoot.

“Not going back to the morgue tonight, then?”

“He’ll keep,” Sherlock said.

John indicated the refrigerator with a nod. “And the arm?”

“The arm?  Oh—an experiment.  I want to examine the difference between a tattoo applied pre- and post-mortem at the cellular level.”

He peered into the filling pot, then swept his trenchant gaze over John. It was done in the time it took to blink, and most people would never notice it, but John did. Sherlock had been giving him these extra once-overs for ten months, ever since John moved back to Baker Street. Sherlock could be a rude, indifferent, socially tone-deaf bastard, but he was as sensitive as a cat with those he liked, and John was grateful that Sherlock, at least, didn’t burden him with sympathetic looks and expressions of concern. It was easy for him to pretend that he didn’t notice his friend’s little assessments, and in almost no other way did he indicate that he was aware of John’s loss.

“Pasta okay?” John asked. The question was strictly pro forma; Sherlock was largely indifferent to mealtimes and if he’d thought there were a way to exist solely on air John reckoned that he’d probably try it.

“Hm? Fine,” Sherlock supposed. An arch expression crossed his face then. “’Lionheart’?” he said.

“Never mind,” John replied.

* * * * *

Sherlock didn’t actually own any tattoo equipment, just the arm, so for the moment he had nothing on which to experiment. He stood at the living room window, tuning his violin. John hung the dishtowel over the back of a chair to dry.  “I’m going to try this brandy Hamp brought,” he said.  “Would you like a glass?”

“Not just now.”

John shrugged, took down just the one glass, and poured. Nothing happened.  He looked at the bottle and made a slight swirling motion with it. There was definitely plenty of brandy in there, but the opaque glass prevented him seeing why it wouldn’t pour.  He tried again.  This time the bottle produced a slight trickle, then nothing.  John frowned at it. “What the hell?” He held the bottle up to the light and tilted it, trying to see inside.  “There’s something in there,” he said.

“Brandy, I expect,” Sherlock replied.

“No, actually.  Well, yeah, but I mean there’s something in the bottle, blocking it.”

Sherlock perked up a bit.  “Let me see.”

John demonstrated, tipping the bottle into the glass but with the same result. A little trickle of brandy that stopped almost immediately.

Sherlock took the bottle from him. He peered into the mouth, holding the bottle to the light.  He stood it on the table and studied it from every angle.  Picked it up again, sniffed the cap.  Licked the opening.  Turned it about and looked at the underside.  Upended it over the sink.  Another irregular trickle.  He wrapped the bottle in a towel.  “Stand back,“ he said, and turning his face away he cracked the bottle hard against the side of the sink.

“Sherlock—” John started to object but stopped when he saw that something in addition to shattered glass had fallen into the sink: a wad of plastic blister wrap with something white enclosed inside.

Sherlock looked at it lying there in the sink for a moment before finally picking it up.  He carried it to the table and used a scalpel to delicately slice away the clear packing tape securing the blister wrap.  He peeled the wrap away to reveal a small zip-sealed, clear plastic bag containing something wrapped in jeweller’s cotton.

“What the hell…?” John muttered.  “What is that?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, but he was vibrant with interest now.  He carefully sliced open the little bag, then the tape securing the cotton, and used the scalpel to push down the edges of the cotton and reveal a clear blue, oval-cut gemstone about the size of a hen’s egg.  He sat back in his chair, steepled his hands, and considered it silently.

“Is that a diamond?” John asked.

“It’s the Great Khan.”

“The what?”

“The Great Khan.  The most valuable blue topaz in the world.”

“Oh, come on.  You—you’re serious,” John said, not fully believing him.

“John:  This is the Great Khan.  It disappeared from the the New Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in 1909 and hasn’t been seen since.”

“What, and it just turns up today in a bottle of brandy?  In our flat? That’s ridiculous.”  John looked at Sherlock, who was clearly not having him on, and then back at the stone. It was far too big to have fit into the mouth of the bottle, he realized.  “How the hell did it get in there?”

Sherlock went to the sink and picked up a large piece of glass—the piece with the medallion on it.  He held it under the magnifying light, turned it over.  “Here,” he said, pointing.  “Where the medallion is.  Someone’s cut a hole in the bottle, dropped the stone in, and then sealed the hole with the medallion.”

“But why?”

“To smuggle it into England, at a guess.”

“Oh, hold on,” John objected.  “Hamp’s no smuggler.”

“Didn’t say he was.  He doesn’t have to be.  Probably didn’t know it was there, unless you and he are much better friends than you’ve said.”  They considered the stone as it glittered on the cotton.

“What’s it worth?”

Sherlock wasn’t completely sure about that.  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of two million pounds,” he said.  “Give or take.”

“For a topaz?  Come on, Sherlock.  That’s…that’s a semi-precious stone.  It’s not like it’s a diamond.  Why would it be worth so much money?”

“Age and provenance,” Sherlock said.  “It was mined during the reign of Ghengis Khan.  The story is that he owned it for a time, until it was stolen from him.  That alone makes it valuable.  Then there’s the colour.”

“But you see blue topaz in jewellery shops all the time.”

“That’s almost never real blue topaz,” Sherlock said.  “It’s clear topaz, or grey, or yellow, that’s been irradiated to change the stone’s colour centers.”

“Irradiated?”

“Yes.  Most gemstones get their colour from elements and impurities in their chemical composition: chromium in rubies. Iron and titanium in emeralds and sapphires. Topaz gets its colour from imperfections in the lattice structure of the crystal itself.  When it’s exposed to fast neutrons during irradiation its colour centres are changed and the stone turns blue.”  He held the gem up to the light.  “That’s not the same colour that you see in most jewellery shop topaz, is it?”

“No…No, those are more of a sky blue.  This is kind of…it’s got a sort of grey cast to it.”

“London Blue,” Sherlock said.  “It’s the most popular colour of topaz, but it’s also almost impossible to find in nature.  The Great Khan is the largest naturally-occurring London Blue topaz ever found.”

“And it’s sitting on our kitchen table.”

“Mm.”

“Well, I guess we’d better turn it in, then.”

Sherlock didn’t reply.  He frowned at the rock, thinking.

“But who would we give it to?” John wondered.  “The police?  A museum?”  Sherlock didn’t answer. He was still focused on the rock.  “Sherlock?”

“Where did your friend say that bottle came from?”

“Uh…he has a subscription to a kind of liquor club.”

“Liquor club.”

“Yeah.  You pay a subscription fee, and then every three months they send you a crate with…three or four bottles, I think he said…of different kinds of high-end alcohol.  You know:  cognac, brandy, whiskey, stuff like that.”

“But where did it come from?”

“Well, he has them delivered to his club, so he must have picked it up today when he was in town.”

“No,” Sherlock said impatiently.  “What’s the name of the company that sends the liquor?”

It was John’s turn to frown.  “I don’t know.  The bottle said ‘Blue Goose’ or something, but I think that’s the brand. I don’t think it’s the same as the company that runs the subscription club. You don’t think Hamp is smuggling gems into the country?  Sherlock:  There’s no way.”

“I think he didn’t know that the stone was in the bottle he gave you.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not involved in getting the bottles into England.”

“Sherlock—”

“But I doubt it.”

“Okay, then.”

Sherlock was still frowning at the stone.  “The Great Khan,” he mused. “After all these years.  You know, it’s famous for being blue, but it really should be infamous for being red.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means murder only ever has two motives, John:  money and power.  A stone like this can give a man both.  People have been killing each other over this little scrap of aluminium and fluorine for eight hundred years, and they’re not going to stop now.”  He looked up at John.

“You think Hamp is in danger?”

“I think that whoever holds that stone will always be in danger.”

“I’ll call him,” John said at once, and reached into his pocket for his phone.

“John, wait.  Don’t tell him why you’re calling.  Just tell him that you need to meet with him and that it’s important.  Say nothing about the stone.”

John knew better than to distrust Sherlock’s advice about things like that.  Hampton’s phone rang twice, then sent him to voice mail.  “Hamp?  It’s John.  Listen, call me when you get this message, will you?  It’s important.  I’ll have the phone on late.  Just call me, please.”  He ended the call and looked at Sherlock.

“Do you know his club?” Sherlock asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, it’s The Officers’ Club.”

“Grosvenor Square,“ Sherlock said at once.  “Let’s go.”

“You’re not leaving that out on the table,” John said, indicating the gem.

“No,” Sherlock said. He took the tattooed arm from the fridge, unwrapped it, and placed the stone into the crook of the elbow.  He replaced the wrapping and put the arm next to the eggs.

“Well, you couldn’t give me two million quid to touch it now,” John said.

*

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