Tregennis also reveals that he was estranged from his family over financial issues, though stating that they had been reconciled for some time. Holmes, agreeing that it seems a very exceptional incident, agrees to look into the case.īefore starting off towards the house, however, Holmes questions Tregennis, who confirms most of the vicar's account and declares that it is certainly the work of a supernatural agent. Mrs Porter, the housekeeper, reported nothing suspicious, and nothing was stolen or otherwise disturbed. Upon arriving at the house he found his siblings still seated around the card table, the sister dead and the brothers completely insane, with all of their faces convulsed in horror. The next morning while out on an early walk he encountered a doctor who had been urgently called to Tredannick Wartha and who offered to take him with him. Mr Roundhay reports that Tregennis spent the previous night with his siblings Owen, George, and Brenda at their house playing whist, but left shortly after 10 o'clock. Shortly afterwards Tregennis and Roundhay come to Holmes at his cottage to inform Holmes of terrible event which occurred the night previous at Tredannick Wartha, the Tregennis family home. Through his interest in the ruins Holmes soon meets Mr Roundhay, the vicar of the nearby hamlet of Tredannick Wollas and an amateur archeologist, and Mortimer Tregennis, the vicar's boarder.

but the holiday ends with a bizarre event. They rent a small cottage on the coast at Poldhu Cove in Cornwall, a region famous for its tempestuous seas and lonely moors dotted by the ruins of a lost civilization. Doyle ranked 'The Adventure of the Devil's Foot' ninth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.ĭue to Holmes' declining health, his doctor sends him and Dr John Watson to the countryside to convalesce. It is one of eight stories in the cycle collected in His Last Bow. 'The Adventure of the Devil's Foot' is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The adventure of the devil's foot