The Five Orange Pips

"The Five Orange Pips", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fifth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The story was first published in The Strand Magazine in November 1891. Conan Doyle later ranked the story seventh in a list of his twelve favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.

A young gentleman named John Openshaw has a strange story: in 1869 his uncle Elias Openshaw had suddenly come back to England to settle on an estate in Horsham, West Sussex after living for years in the United States as a planter in Florida and serving as a colonel in the Confederate Army.

Not being married, Elias had allowed his nephew to stay at his estate. Strange incidents have occurred; one is that although John could go anywhere in the house, he could never enter a locked room containing his uncle's trunks. Another peculiarity was that in March 1883 a letter postmarked Pondicherry, in India, arrived for the Colonel inscribed only «K. K. K.» with five orange pips (seeds) enclosed.

More strange things happened: Papers from the locked room were burnt and a will was drawn up leaving the estate to John Openshaw. The Colonel's behaviour became bizarre. He would either lock himself in his room and drink or he would go shouting forth in a drunken sally with a pistol in his hand. On 2 May 1883 he was found dead in a garden pool.

Famous works of the author Arthur Conan Doyle's: «A Study in Scarlet», «Silver Blaze», «The Hound of the Baskervilles», «The Yellow Face», «A Scandal in Bohemia», «The Red-Headed League», A Case of Identity", «The Boscombe Valley Mystery», «The Five Orange Pips», «The Man with the Twisted Lip», «The Blue Carbuncle», «The Speckled Band», «The Engineer's Thumb», «The Noble Bachelor», «The Beryl Coronet», «The Copper Beeches» and many more.