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The Adventure of the Crooked Man
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Sherlock Holmes 2025: Week 06/01 - Adventure of the Crooked Man, The
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The Adventure of the Crooked Man (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes)
Discussion Questions
1) Why would Miss Morrison deny having knowledge of the events leading up to Mr. Barclay’s death even in the name of secrecy?
2) How may Nancy Barclay’s perspective have influenced the outcome of this story?
3) If Harry had returned from the enemies’ hands in the war, would James have betrayed him again? Would Harry have won over Nancy?
4) Do you believe Mr. Wood would have killed Mr. Barclay if the initial shock hadn’t? Why or why not?
5) What role did the biblical name David have in the overall story?
Mod
I agree about the exotic animals. I take it also as a wider presence of colonial empire in these stories: so many characters have served in the army in India or Afghanistan, ships sail from South Africa, mormons and black people and the KKK come over from America, and exotic creatures wander English glades.
Mod
I think that was pretty prevalent at the time. I read a book a couple of years ago, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson in which the author explains the capture and trading of birds in the Victorian age. Many birds were hunted to extinction and for what? Their feathers for women's hats.
Mod
Yeah, I wrote an essay about that a few years ago. I live in Florida, and some of our most popular birds were almost lost (roseate spoonbills and snowy and great egrets).
When he had heard Holmes description of the unknown animal, I would have thought that Watson might have deduced the possibility of it being a mongoose having spent many years in the army in India. However at that point in the story there was no real connection to that country apart from the dead man’s past.For me this story is one of the most memorable from the Jeremy Brett TV series because of the flashbacks to India.
The episode, like the original story, leaves the ending a little bit up in the air. With the devious husband out of the way, would the long lost lovers form any sort of relationship, even if it was only platonic? Surely Mrs. Barclay, once recovered, could really improve the life of Henry Wood, both materially and emotionally. He may have been too proud or ashamed to accept any sort of help at first but he certainly deserved to be rewarded in some way for the despicable betrayal by his army ‘comrade.’
The Adventure of the Crooked Man (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes)
Availability The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/834
Background Information
"The Adventure of the Crooked Man", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in July 1893, and in Harper's Weekly in the United States on July 8, 1893.
Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" 15th in a list of his 19 favorite Sherlock Holmes stories.
Publication History
"The Adventure of the Crooked Man" was published in the UK in The Strand Magazine in July 1893, and in the US in Harper's Weekly on July 8, 1893. It was also published in the US edition of The Strand Magazine in August 1893. The story was published with seven illustrations by Sidney Paget in the Strand, and with two illustrations by W. H. Hyde in Harper's Weekly. It was included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which was published in December 1893 in the UK and February 1894 in the US.
A Short Review
At the outset, the case presented to Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" seems a straightforward one, with Nancy Barclay killing her husband in a locked room following a heated argument. The police, though, seem disinterested in the missing key or the strange animal footprints inside the room, factors that Holmes sees as vital.
The story, therefore, develops from a supposedly impossible crime into a narrative of why events have unfolded as they did. Part of the narrative deals, eventually, with the Indian Mutiny, a topic already touched upon by Conan Doyle in The Sign of Four.
The fact that there is no crime in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" doesn’t detract from the story, for the case shows how Holmes observes whilst the police force simply sees.
"The Adventure of the Crooked Man" was also the fifth story adapted by Granada TV for British television, and the episode would be broadcast on the 22nd May 1984, with Jeremy Brett, of course, starring as Sherlock Holmes. The Granada TV adaptation, as with most of their stories, stayed true to the original Conan Doyle storyline.
Commentary
"Elementary, my dear Watson" is an often quoted line from Sherlock Holmes. However, Holmes never says this in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. In The Adventure of the Crooked Man, though, he comes his closest to it:
"I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said he.
...
"Excellent!" I cried.
"Elementary," said he.
The Granada Television adaptation of "The Crooked Man" reverses the quote, having Watson deduce that Holmes had looked up a passage in the Bible since they returned home from Aldershot. When Holmes asks Watson how he knew, he points out Holmes' bookmark and replies "Elementary, my dear Holmes".
The exact date of this story's setting is unknown, but since Nancy had been married for "upward of thirty years" and the Indian Rebellion broke out in 1857, the date would need to be at or past 1887. The first few lines by Watson explain that this story occurred in the "summer" just after his marriage, which, according to The Sign of the Four, was sometime in 1889; this suggests the story is set in either 1889 or 1890.