Literature
A Study in Scarlet
3/4/1881 · Arthur Conan Doyle
A man is found dead in an empty house in Lauriston Gardens — no marks of violence, the word RACHE written in blood on the wall — and Scotland Yard summons Sherlock Holmes to make sense of it. It is the first murder investigation Watson records with his new Baker Street flatmate, establishing the detective's method: read the scene, discard assumptions, reason from evidence alone.