This Side of the Pond

There’s an establishment in England that the locals will tell you is the only place serving beer from which you will exit feeling more sober than when you walked in.

Or, at least, there was.

For decades, the Crooked House has been famous for its structural anomalies. But last week, it became the focus of a classic whodunnit.

The Crooked House was first built in 1765 as a perfectly normal red-brick farmhouse, but converted into a pub in 1830. It was called the Glynne Arms, until its name was changed to The Siden House, meaning “crooked” in the Black Country dialect.

The name changed because the...