An excerpt from "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Setup: Watson and Holmes are taking the train to visit a lady in distress who lives on an
estate outside of the city of Winchester.
 

It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little
fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was
shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilirating nip in the
air, which set an edge to a man's energy. All over the country-side,
away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey
roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amidst the light green of
the new foliage.

"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried, with all the enthusiasm
of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.

But Holmes shook his head gravely.

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a
mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with
reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered
houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the
only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of
the impunity with which crime may be committed there."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear
old homesteads?"

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in
London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the
smiling and beautiful country-side."

"You horrify me!"

"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do
in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile
that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow,
does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then
the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of
complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime
and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields,
filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of
the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness
which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the
wiser. Had this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in
Winchester, I should never have had a fear for her. It is the five
miles of country which makes the danger."