romancing the Stone
or, "Any regrets, Negretto?" 'The Mazarin Stone' isn't so much an entry in the Holmes canon as a great big monster truck ploughing its way through established precepts of the Great Game. Dorothy Sayers famously said you have to play that Game with all the straight-faced solemnity of a cricket match at Lord's but taking this story on its own terms as a 'Watsonian record' is impossible - its actual effect is that of an out and out comedy. Nothing about it makes sense. Nothing about it fits with established canon. From the sudden appearance of a bow window at 221b, and a 'magic door' connecting it to Holmes' bedroom (??), to the the very first appearance of Billy the page, introduced to us by Watson's familiar "You don't change, either" as if he's an old stalwart, it's all of a muddle. And although there is a precedent for a story narrated in the third person ( 'His Last Bow' ) at least that one had the char