A Scandal in Bohemia by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes
A Scandal in Bohemia
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrator: David Ian Davies

Holmes is visited by a masked gentleman introducing himself as Count Von Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client, but Holmes quickly deduces that he is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, the hereditary King of Bohemia. The King admits this, tearing off his mask. (Actually, the Habsburg Emperors were also Kings of Bohemia and there was no separate dynasty; Doyle chose to place an imaginary king at an existing country, rather than create a whole imaginary country such as Ruritania).

It transpires that the King is engaged to Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, a young Scandinavian princess, but the King’s potential in-laws-to-be would have a very low opinion of him if any evidence of his former liaison with an opera singer named Irene Adler, originally from New Jersey, were ever revealed to them. Unfortunately, that is what the lady herself is threatening to do, apparently not, though, for monetary gain, for the King’s agents have already tried to buy the evidence. They have also broken into Miss Adler’s house to find it.

Set in 1888, this Sherlock Homes story was the first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories to be published in The Strand Magazine and the first Sherlock Holmes story illustrated by Sidney Paget.