Major Murphy, Holmes' contact in the regiment, has explained that Barclay, while completely devoted to his wife, had a rather vindictive nature elsewhere.

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.

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 wooden box on his back.

Finally escaping, he lived for many years in India as a conjurer, preferring Nancy and his fellow soldiers to think he had been killed in action instead of seeing his deformity.

Nancy screamed and fainted; in the chaos, Wood's pet mongoose Teddy escaped his wooden box, and ran up the curtain after the canary.

Reflexively pocketing the door key, Wood recaptured Teddy and fled the scene, afraid he would be accused of murder.

It starred Eille Norwood as Holmes and Hubert Willis as Watson, and featured Gladys Jennings as Mrs Barclay and Dora De Winton as Miss Morrison.

[7] The Granada TV version with Jeremy Brett is faithful to the original — except that it has the housekeeper, instead of the coachman, tell Holmes of the clue of the missing key.

The story was adapted as a 1999 episode of the animated television series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century titled "The Crooked Man".

[8] Holmes describes this case to his addiction group in the episode "A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs" (2013) in the CBS TV series Elementary.

[12] This adaptation contains a twist to the end of the denouement scene: after Holmes has left the room, Watson advises Wood to wait a while and then return to Nancy Barclay, that his disfigurement will not matter to her.