A minor character in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (BLUE, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) — a down-at-heel scholar whose lost goose sets the entire plot in motion, entirely without his knowledge.
Role in BLUE
Baker is a member of the Alpha Inn goose club, a Christmas savings arrangement run by the landlord Windigate. On the night of 27 December, he is set upon by a gang of roughs in Goodge Street, drops his goose and hat in the struggle, and flees. The goose he lost happened to contain the Blue Carbuncle — a stolen gemstone worth £1,000 — hidden inside it by a hotel worker named Ryder. Baker knows nothing of this.
Peterson the commissionaire retrieves the goose and hat and brings them to Holmes. Holmes deduces Baker’s character entirely from the hat, then places a newspaper notice to summon him. Baker appears at 221B, confirms the hat is his, accepts a replacement goose, and reveals the provenance of the original bird — the Alpha Inn club, supplied by a Brixton Road salesman named Breckinridge. This chain of supply leads Holmes to Ryder and the resolution of the case.
Holmes clears Baker of any involvement the moment he leaves: “So much for Mr. Henry Baker. It is quite certain that he knows nothing whatever about the matter.”
Physical Description
Baker is a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a broad, intelligent face tapering to a pointed grizzled-brown beard. His rusty black frock-coat is buttoned to the chin, his wrists protrude without cuffs, and a reddened nose and slight hand tremor confirm Holmes’s earlier inference of heavy drinking. Watson notes he gives “the impression generally of a man of learning and letters who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.”
Holmes’s Hat Analysis
Before Baker arrives, Holmes gives one of his most extended deductive set-pieces — reading an entire life from a battered felt hat:
- Large brain-case: the hat’s great size implies high intellect
- Fallen fortunes: an expensive hat, three years old, nothing bought since
- Moral retrogression, probably drink: declining foresight (broken hat-securer not replaced), moral suggested by reddening of nose confirmed on Baker’s arrival
- Wife has ceased to love him: the hat has not been brushed for weeks
- No gas at home: tallow stains from candles rather than gas-jets
- Sedentary life, out of training: fluffy indoor dust; heavy perspiration marks
All deductions are confirmed when Baker appears in person. The hat analysis is a demonstration piece: Holmes uses Baker as a teaching case for Watson’s benefit before the man even walks through the door.
Character Note
Baker is one of the Canon’s more sympathetically drawn innocents — clearly intelligent (his use of the Latin disjecta membra is casual and unhurried), clearly reduced, and entirely unaware of the drama swirling around his Christmas goose. He takes his replacement bird, makes a small dignified joke, and departs. He has no further role.