"Vatican cameos" is a case hinted at in the Holmes canon, Sherlock mentions on passing in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
"I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases".
—Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Conan Doyle never wrote a story about it, but there's a least one book, by Ann Margaret Lewis, that imagines how that case played out.
Maybe they added the reference because the next episode is an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The 2 answers: reference in the canon, and the WW2 term are good. If the latter is true, thenI would suppose it came from the story reference. An IMDB about the Sherlock episode sees as a fault Sholto s not reacting to Holmes s warning (being military and all, and obsessed with security) but it makes sense that he wouldn t have heard it.
I believe it's a reference to another Sherlock Holmes story, where he was hired to find stolen Cameos (which were priceless, but also politically charged items), and the case turned out to have murderous intent behind it. John and Sherlock were there for photographs, and the case turned deadly when the Americans broke in.
"The phrase first originated in World War 2. It was used when a non-military person, who was armed (gun or knife) entered a British military base. The phrase was a signal for everyone duck out of the line of fire. Sherlock knew that John, being a military man, would recognise this phrase and duck out of the way of the gun in the safe."
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"Vatican cameos" is a case hinted at in the Holmes canon, Sherlock mentions on passing in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
"I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases".
—Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Conan Doyle never wrote a story about it, but there's a least one book, by Ann Margaret Lewis, that imagines how that case played out.
Maybe they added the reference because the next episode is an adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The 2 answers: reference in the canon, and the WW2 term are good. If the latter is true, thenI would suppose it came from the story reference. An IMDB about the Sherlock episode sees as a fault Sholto s not reacting to Holmes s warning (being military and all, and obsessed with security) but it makes sense that he wouldn t have heard it.
I believe it's a reference to another Sherlock Holmes story, where he was hired to find stolen Cameos (which were priceless, but also politically charged items), and the case turned out to have murderous intent behind it. John and Sherlock were there for photographs, and the case turned deadly when the Americans broke in.
"The phrase first originated in World War 2. It was used when a non-military person, who was armed (gun or knife) entered a British military base. The phrase was a signal for everyone duck out of the line of fire. Sherlock knew that John, being a military man, would recognise this phrase and duck out of the way of the gun in the safe."