"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 8 July 1893. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" 15th in a list of his 19 favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. Synopsis Holmes calls upon Watson at his surgery late one night to request his assistance in an investigation. Holmes explains that, in Aldershot Camp, Colonel James Barclay of The Royal Munsters and his wife Nancy DeVoy Barclay were a seemingly happy couple; however, Barclay has died, and his wife is suspected of his murder. Major Murphy, Holmes' contact in the regiment, has explained that Barclay, while completely devoted to his wife, had a rather vindictive nature elsewhere. He had also been subject to random fits of depression, and disliked being left alone at night. The night of the supposed crime, Nancy Barclay had left for a church meeting in company with her friend, Miss Morrison. When she returned, she had been considerably agitated, and had asked her maid for tea. When the maid returned with the tea, she overheard the Barclays furiously arguing behind the locked morning room door. Nancy, the only one loud enough to be clearly audible, repeatedly said the words "David", "coward", and "give me back my life". Moments later, screams rang out; when the Barclay's coachman entered the room through the open french windows, he found Nancy collapsed and the Colonel dead, bleeding from a wound on his head. The key to the room was missing, and the door had to be opened by a locksmith. Nancy, temporarily insane from shock, was removed to a hospital, and Holmes was called in to investigate. Holmes found signs that a silent third party had been present; the man had left his stick in the room, his footprints in the lawn, and presumably also had taken the key. Holmes also found the pawmarks of a short-legged, long-bodied animal on the floor, as well as signs the creature had attempted to eat the Barclay's pet canary. Interrogating Miss Morrison, Holmes learned that, on the way home from the meeting, she and Nancy had encountered a deformed man with a