The Man with the Twisted Lip

"The Man with the Twisted Lip", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the sixth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891. Doyle ranked "The Man with the Twisted Lip" sixteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.

Plot summary

Dr. Watson is called upon late at night by a female friend of his wife. Her husband has been absent for several days and, as he is an opium addict, she is sure he has been indulging in a lengthy drug binge in a dangerous East End opium den. Frantic with worry, she seeks Dr. Watson's help in fetching him home. Watson does this, but he also finds his friend Sherlock Holmes in the den, disguised as an old man, trying to extract information about a new case from the addicts in the den.

Mr. Neville St. Clair, a respectable and punctual country businessman, has disappeared. Making the matter even more mysterious is that Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that she saw her husband at a second-floor window of the opium den, in Upper Swandam Lane, a rather rough part of town near the docks. He withdrew into the window immediately, and Mrs. St. Clair is quite sure that there was something very wrong.

Naturally, she tries to enter the building, but her way was blocked by the opium den's owner, a Lascar. She quickly fetches the police, but they cannot find Mr. St. Clair. The room, in whose window she saw her husband, is that of a dirty, disfigured beggar, well known to the police, by the name of Hugh Boone. The police are about to put this report down a mistake of some kind when Mrs. St. Clair spots and identifies a box of wooden bricks that her husband said he would buy for their son. A further search turns up some of her husband's clothes. Later, his coat, with the pockets full of several pounds' worth of pennies and halfpennies, is found in the Thames just below the building.

The beggar is arrested and locked up at the police station, and Holmes initially is quite convinced that Mr. St. Clair has been the unfortunate victim of murder. However, several days after Mr. St. Clair's disappearance, his wife receives a letter in his own writing. The arrival of this letter forces Holmes to reconsider his conclusions, leading him eventually to an extraordinary solution. Taking a bath sponge to the police station in a Gladstone bag, Holmes washes Boone's still-dirty face, causing his face to be revealed — the face of Neville St. Clair! Upon Mr. St. Clair's immediate confession, this solves the mystery, and also creates a few problems.

The Man with the Twisted Lip

It seems that Mr. St. Clair has been leading a double life, one of respectability, and the other as a beggar. In his youth, he had been an actor before becoming a newspaper reporter. In order to research an article, he had disguised himself as a beggar for a short time, during which he earned a very large amount of money. Later in his life, he returned to the street to beg for several days in order to pay a large debt. Given a choice between his newspaper salary and his high beggar earnings, he eventually became a professional beggar. His takings were large enough that he was able to establish himself as a country gentleman, marry well, and begin a respectable family. His wife never knew what he did for a living, and Holmes agrees to preserve Mr. St. Clair's secret as long as no more is heard of Hugh Boone.

The story is unique among Holmes stories in two ways: when the mystery is resolved, it turns out that no crime has been committed and there is no villain; and unlike other stories, Holmes (or in fact, Doyle) does not explain how he solved the mystery, and leaves it to the intelligent reader to work out (the clue is fairly enough given in the story).

Points of interest

What the modern reader may find striking is the obvious fact that the use of narcotics was not illegal in the time of the story. Although the opium den was an environment connected with crime and underworld, it operated quite openly and legally. The selling of opium or other drugs was in and of itself no crime in the London of 1889, and nobody so considered it.

Another contention is that many Sherlockian mysteries have solutions based on seemingly unlikely events. The ability of St. Clair to earn a good living begging is considered by some to be such a plot point, but others disagree. For example in Toronto a woman known as the "shaky bag lady" did this very thing, surpassing the efforts of common beggars by presenting herself as more pathetic than legitimate beggars. The plot may have been suggested by Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursitors (1561) in which he describes the unmasking of the 'counterfeit crank' Nicholas Jennings, who begs by day displaying his false sores, while returning at night to a comfortable home with a housekeeper.

Adaptations

A silent version of The Man with the Twisted Lip was made in 1921, directed by Maurice Elvey, and a short film version was made in 1951, produced by Rudolph Cartier. This 1951 version changed the title to The Man Who Disappeared, and was the failed pilot for a proposed new television series about Sherlock Holmes.

Granada Television also produced a version in 1986, adapted by Alan Plater as part of their The Return of Sherlock Holmes television series.

In 1964, the story was adapted into an episode of the 1964 BBC series Sherlock Holmes starring Douglas Wilmer.

The short story "Blind Willie," in Stephen King's book Hearts in Atlantis, has distinct similarities to "The Man with the Twisted Lip."

In Agatha Christie's short story, "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim", the plot retells the story of "The Man with the Twisted Lip".

Reference in later books

Holmes arrives at the solution after putting on a dressing gown and spending a sleepless night with an ounce of shag tobacco for his pipe - and by the morning has the solution. In Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison (1931), Lord Peter Wimsey - who is in the frequent habit of making humorous comparisons between himself and Holmes - is faced with a perplexing mystery and remarks, "Give me the statutory dressing-gown and ounce of shag, and I undertake to dispose of this little difficulty," whereupon he spends a sleepless night of his own and duly solves the mystery.

External links

• The Man With the Twisted Lip with the illustrations of Sidney Paget in colour.
• Parallel translation of story "The Man with the Twisted Lip" in English and Russian