Yeah, Sherlock Holmes. Not one of his stronger points, it's specifically been 'called out' for that. It's generally impossible to 'eliminate' every conceivable alternative theory. Fascinating fellows though, both Holmes and his creator. Full of radical contradictions, that I suppose embodied those of their era.
Hard not to warm to that late 19th-century faith in rational enquiry and scientific explanations as a cure for life's evils, compared to, say, the tedious fatalistic theological ramblings of Tolstoy and his ilk. That might just be me being a philistine with no feeling for literature or religion though. But when I waded through The Brothers Karamazov I was really wishing Holmes and Watson would have arrived on the train from Moscow, and quickly solved the murder through the application of science (examining the candlestick would probably have been sufficient), thus short-circuiting the whole gloomy and self-destructive storyline. Before jumping back on the train again (while zonked out on opium for the ride home) leaving the Russians to stand around wondering what to do for the next several hundred pages.
I'm going off on tangents because this thread is a bit pointless.