The Blue Carbuncle

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Dramatised for Radio by Bert Coules

After kicking off with A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, the BBC’s ground-breaking complete audio Canon moved on to tackle Doyle’s short stories in book publication order, so “The Blue Carbuncle”, which comes from the first collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was one of the earliest episodes to be written and recorded. Looking back at the script now for this anthology, I don’t think it shows; I hope not, anyway.

It’s true that everyone was feeling their way slightly, concerned about establishing a house style and laying down guidelines as to what we could and couldn’t do with the stories, but from the very beginning, the brief was to be ‘imaginatively faithful’, to be aware that a dramatisation had to be exactly that: dramatic. What was required - and on the whole what was expected, too, by a modern audience - was not simply the original prose text parcelled out to a bunch of different voices and tied together with a lot of straight-off-the-page narration, but a true recreation, a reinvention making full use of all the possibilities of a different medium. I’ll leave you to decide how well or otherwise I succeeded with this particular example.

Technical terms: a teaser is a short scene before the opening credits designed to establish the mood and hopefully to hook the audience. The sig is the signature tune, in our case a haunting solo violin passage from Mendelssohn’s Sonata, Opus 4 in F Minor. Int and Ext in the scene headings stand for Interior and Exterior, an important distinction, since the sound-picture of each as conjured by the acoustic, the effects, and the actors’ performances is markedly different. Cut to is the customary way of denoting the end of a scene in a script, though in production hard cuts are rare and tend to be used purely for an occasional shock effect: mixes or fades are more usual and help to create a seamless flow of action.

And that’s all you need to know, and probably more. Unleash your imagination and try to hear what you read; I hope you enjoy the experience.

This script is protected by copyright. For permission to reproduce it in any way or to perform it in any medium please apply to the author’s agent.

Contact details can be found at bertcoules.co.uk First broadcast on the BBC on January 2 nd , 1991

THE CAST

in order of speaking

HOLMES: Sherlock Holmes.

WATSON: Doctor John Watson.

COLLECTOR: A female Salvation Army tin-rattler.

HORNER: John Horner. A rising young plumber, determined to go straight after his one lapse ten years ago.

MRS. HORNER: Alice, John Horner’s wife.

BRADSTREET: Inspector Bradstreet of Scotland Yard. A determined detective.

RYDER: James Ryder. The upper-attendant (which is to say glorified dogsbody) at the rather ritzy Hotel Cosmopolitan. “What a shrimp it is...

Not enough blood in him for felony.” (Holmes).

BAKER: Henry Baker. A once dignified, scholarly gentleman who has come down in the world and sought solace in drink. Now very hard-up and shabbily dressed, but retaining something of his old pride. Rather a sad figure.

WINDIGATE: The host of the Alpha Tavern in Bloomsbury, and typically bluff and outgoing.

1st ROUGH: On the London street.

2nd ROUGH: A chum of the above.

PETERSON: A member of the Corps of Commissionaires, a well-respected body in Victorian London. The higher end of the working class

and almost certainly an ex-serviceman. A man with a keen sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.

BRECKINRIDGE: A goose-dealer at Covent Garden street market. A keen betting man with a short temper.

MRS. OAKSHOTT: Sister of James Ryder, but a rather more balanced individual.

CONSTABLE: A constable with little to say for himself.

The Play

It is the 23 rd of December, 1889.

TEASER. MUSIC: SOMETHING EERIE AND MYSTERIOUS.

Over it, perhaps with very slight echo:

HOLMES: ( Close, intense) Look at it. Just see how it glints and sparkles.

It is a nucleus and focus of crime. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. It’s a bonny thing.

The music swells into the opening sig.

Opening announcements.

The music fades into:

WATSON: ( narrating): The winter of 1889 was bitterly cold. After dark, the stars shone stark and bright in a cloudless sky and the breath of the late-night Christmas shoppers blew out into smoke like so many silent pistol shots, while their footfalls rang out crisp and loud. But for all the inclement weather, there was a sense of collective goodwill in the air as if the people of the capital had agreed to lay aside their differences and petty squabbles for a few short days and unite in celebrating the season of forgiveness.