I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes stories from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the best story. After that, I’ll share my ranking of the best villains in the Holmes canon. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Stories
37. The Adventure of the Crooked Man (July 1893, Memoirs)
“You may talk o’ gin and beer
When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,
An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.”
So writes, of Aldershot, Rudyard Kipling, and, many years later, George MacDonald Fraser—who was one hell of a good writer—used with well-intentioned irony Kipling’s line as the title of his book, Quartered Safe Out Here. Conan Doyle’s story is set in Aldershot: place of gin, beer, and safe quarter, where dirty, underhanded Colonel Barclay lives with the wife whose hand he so treacherously took.
This is one of those Holmes stories where Watson and the readers are brought in too late. How much better would it have been to be with Holmes throughout his two day investigation? As it stands, Holmes appears, just before midnight, at Watson’s home, where he outlines the case, and the pair travel to Aldershot where they interview Henry Wood who explains everything. We do not actually see any of Holmes’ detecting. Imagine if we (with Watson) had been brought in at the beginning of the case. Holmes could have appeared at Watson’s home, as before, at midnight, and we could have visited Aldershot in the morning. We could have seen the curious collection of weapons in Colonel Barclay’s home, and we could have followed along as Holmes became ever more puzzled by the mystery before finally making headway after his interview with Miss Morrison. In this scenario, Holmes would not have had to return to London to fetch Watson, and they could have gone straight to Mr. Henry Wood, late of India. (In fact, the idea of Holmes’ returning to London from Aldershot is preposterously weak; Holmes declares that he returned in order to get Watson as a witness. But any witness would do; Holmes need not return to London for Watson, and, in the unlikely eventuality in which only Watson would suffice as a witness, Holmes could have remained in Aldershot and wired for Watson to come.) Had we started with Holmes from the outset, readers would have been treated to a far better version of The Adventure of the Crooked Man, a story which is most interesting for the mongoose, the Biblical reference to David, for the horrible way that Colonel Barclay dies, and for the sensational and double-crossing story that Henry Wood relates.
