"The Crooked Man” is a Sherlock Holmes short story from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection. According to The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, it was Holmes’ 27th case chronologically.
A respected British officer is discovered dead in a locked room after the servants heard him and his wife quarreling. But the wife, and obvious suspect, is rendered insensible by the event.
It looks like an open and shut case until Holmes discovers suspicious footprints suggesting a third person and an animal entered and left the room through a window.
After this, it’s a pretty disappointing case. Holmes barely uses his famous powers of deduction, and that only to determine the one person who may know the cause of the argument. From there, Holmes simply persuades the witness to tell all. SPOILER: The wife didn’t do it.
Not the most exciting of Holmes’ adventures. Indeed, I think it is the least entertaining I’ve read.
