"It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage."
Those who have researched the events which followed this autumnal scene have concluded they took place exactly 113 years ago, on September 29th and 30th, 1887. They comprise one of the most celebrated cases of Mr Sherlock Holmes, and are meticulously described in his inimitable style by Dr Watson in The Five Orange Pips.
The theory that these events occurred on these days is meteorologically consistent, since the weather recorded in London agrees with that described in Dr Watson's careful account of that great adventure. Contemporary records tell us that the last week in September 1887 was an exceptionally stormy one, and the weather report for London for the 29th describes cirrus clouds advancing eastwards across the sky.
Watson reports similar conditions. He tells us that the sun that morning was shining through a dim veil of cloud overhanging the city and, as we have seen, that the weather beforehand had been stormy. Indeed the continuing strong winds provided the denouement for the case, since the murderers are assumed to have made their escape in a boat which was subsequently wrecked by the severe gales.
There were occasions when the weather played a crucial role in Sherlock Holmes's deductions. Towards the end of his very first adventure, A Study in Scarlet, Holmes tells Watson: "There's no room for a mistake. The very first thing which I observed on arriving there was that a cab had made two ruts with its wheels close to the curb. Now, up to last night, we have had no rain for a week, so that those wheels which left such a deep impression must have been there during the night. Since the cab was there after the rain began, and was not there at any time during the morning, it follows that it must have been there during the night."
This fact, combined with two convenient sets of footprints, allows the detective to make a gigantic intellectual leap to the clear conclusion that the cabby "done it". "You amaze me, Holmes," says Dr Watson.