The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

Someone is smashing plaster busts of Napoleon all over London.

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons is one of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, first published in Collier's on 30 April 1904 and in The Strand Magazine in May 1904.

Quick Facts

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Series: The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Genre: Detective fiction short stories
Published in: Strand Magazine
Published: April 1904
Preceded by: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

Facts from the source article.

Background

Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard brings Holmes the case of a man who breaks plaster busts of Napoleon. Lestrade suspects a lunatic who hates Napoleon, but Holmes notes that every broken bust came from the same mould. Then a man is found murdered on a doorstep where another bust was taken.

A photograph in the dead man's pocket leads Holmes to Beppo, an Italian immigrant who once worked at Gelder & Co., where the busts were made in a batch of six. Holmes, Watson and Lestrade wait outside a house in Chiswick and catch Beppo as he smashes another bust.

Holmes then buys the last bust for £10 and breaks it with his hunting crop, revealing the black pearl of the Borgias. Beppo had hidden the stolen pearl in a soft plaster bust just before his arrest for a stabbing, and came back for it after his year in prison. The trick of a gem hidden in one of several identical objects echoes The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.