The Man with the Twisted Lip
A missing man, a twisted face, and a disguise that fooled the great detective.
"The Man with the Twisted Lip" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the sixth of the twelve in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first published in the Strand Magazine in December 1891. It turns on a disappearance, not a murder: the respectable Neville St. Clair vanishes in London, and a disfigured beggar is arrested on suspicion of having killed him.
Quick Facts
- Author
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Series
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
- Genre
- Detective fiction short stories
- Published in
- Strand Magazine
- Published
- December 1891
- Preceded by
- The Five Orange Pips
Lore & Background
Mrs. St. Clair, passing down Upper Swandam Lane, a "vile alley" near the London docks, sees her husband at a second-floor window above an opium den; he vanishes at once, and the lascar who runs the den bars her way. The police find only the lair of a dirty, disfigured beggar known as Hugh Boone, together with a box of toy bricks St. Clair had promised his son and some of his clothes. His coat, its pockets stuffed with pennies and halfpennies, turns up on the bank of the Thames below the back window. Boone is arrested, denies everything and resists every attempt to make him wash.
Reader's Guide
The story opens with Watson fetching an opium addict, Isa Whitney, out of the den for the man's wife; there he finds Holmes, in disguise, gathering information on the St. Clair case. Holmes at first believes St. Clair has been murdered, until Mrs. St. Clair receives a letter in her husband's handwriting with his signet ring enclosed. At the police station Holmes washes the sleeping Boone's face with a bath sponge and reveals him as Neville St. Clair. A former actor and newspaper reporter, St. Clair had found that begging in disguise paid far better than his salary and had kept the truth from his wife and children. As no murder has been committed he is released, and his secret is kept on condition that no more is heard of Hugh Boone.
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