"The Gloria Scott"

The Gloria Scott.

The case begins Saturday, July 3, 1880.

Why?

SEASON OF THE TELLING:
"I have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire."
"I had often endeavoured to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but had never caught him before in a communicative humour."
"Those are the facts of the case, Doctor, and if they are of any use to your collection, I am sure that they are very heartily at your service."

POINT IN HOLMES’S CAREER:
"But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?"
"Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged."

POINT IN HOLMES’S EDUCATION:
"You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor? He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college . . . and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.
"I was laid by the heels for ten days."
"Before the end of the term we were close friends."
"Finally he invited me down to his father’s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation."

SPORTING OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE:
"There was excellent wild-duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing . . ."

HOLMES’S DEPARTURE FROM DONNITHORPE:
"At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close."
"All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe . . ."
"He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance that
the last two months had been very trying ones for him.

THE DATING OF THE GLORIA SCOTT:
"Some particulars of the voyage of the bark Gloria Scott, from her leaving Falmouth on the 8th October, 1855, to her destruction in N. Lat. 15 degrees 20’, W. Long. 25 degrees 14’, on Nov. 6th."
"It was the year ‘55, when the Crimean War was at its height, and the old convict ships had been largely used as transports in the Black Sea."

YEARS PAST SINCE THE SHIP’S DESTRUCTION:
"Why, it’s thirty year and more since I saw you last."
"The case might have been dealt leniently with, but the laws were more harshly administered thirty years ago than now, and on my twenty-third birthday I found myself chained as a felon with thirty-seven other convicts in the ‘tween-decks of the bark Gloria Scott, bound for Australia."
"We prospered, we travelled, we came back as rich colonials to England, and we bought country estates. For more than twenty years we have led peaceful and useful lives, and we hoped that our past was forever buried."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
July 12, 1874. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Summer 1876.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Here’s a fascinating little problem. Trevor distinctly dates the destruction of the Gloria Scott on November 6, 1855. He backs up the general period with the statement that the Crimean War was at its height, which it was in 1855. Yet both he and Hudson refer to that experience as being thirty years ago, which means this case would occur in 1885 . . . while Holmes and Watson were together.
Previous chronologers have dismissed the thirty years as a mutual mistake on the parts of Hudson and Trevor, but what about young Trevor, the physical evidence of those twenty peaceful years in England? The elder Trevor needed more than a few years to find fortune, travel, and eventually feel changed enough to head back to England as a colonial. He thought his past was well behind him, and that means his wife and son were certainly additions to his life after the return to England.
But what if the "thirty years" was not a mistake, but a simple rounding up of a number like twenty-seven or twenty-eight? Sound reasonable enough. In fact, any comparison between the 1850s and the 1880s would seem a bit like three decades, wouldn’t it? Of course, that would make Sherlock Holmes a college student when he first met Dr. Watson . . . but what was it Watson wrote in A Study in Scarlet?

"There was only one student in the room . . ."

Holmes speaks of coming back to his London rooms from Donnithorpe, most probably his Montague Street rooms (which we’ll later learn he had when he "first came up to London"), where he works on organic chemistry, much as he was doing when Watson first met him. Back when we were discussing A Study in Scarlet, I became convinced that Holmes and Watson first met in the summer of 1881. Would it be so impossible, then, that Holmes’s vacation in Donnithorpe took place in the summer of 1880?

Since Holmes’s trip to Donnithorpe begins with the traditional English university long vacation, I’m going to place both the trip and this case on Saturday, July 3, 1880.

"The Speckled Band"

The Speckled Band.

The case begins Sunday, April 1, 1883.

Why?

THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE OCCURRENCE AND THE WRITING:
"On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes . . ."

SIGNIFICANT COMMENTS BY WATSON:
"The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given."

SIGNIFICANT DATE REFERENCE:
"It was early in April in the year ‘83 . . ."

SIGNIFICANT MORNING REFERENCE:
"He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits."

THE TIMES OF THE ROYLOTTS:
"In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage. As it was, he suffered a long term of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man."
"When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old at the time of my mother’s re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money--not less than L1000 a year--and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided with him, with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly after our return to England my mother died --she was killed eight years ago in a railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran."
"Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet . . ."
"She was but thirty at the time of her death . . ."
"She died just two years ago . . ."
"Julia went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to whom she became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and offered no objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the terrible event occurred . . ."
"Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until lately lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend, whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask my hand in marriage."
" . . . we are to be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building . . ."

SIGNIFICANT REFERENCES TO NATURAL EVENT:
"It is a little cold for the time of the year."
"But I have heard that the crocuses promise well."

THE SCHEDULE OF THE WORKMEN:
"Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the building . . ."
" . . . there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our visit."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
April 6, 1883. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Early in April 1883, probably April 4,1883.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
The statement "early in April in the year ‘83" is clear enough, and no chronologer disputes it. The day is the item of question on this case, and my first impression on that score is that Watson would not be so annoyed at being awakened at 7:15 if it were not a day he fully expected to sleep as long as he wanted . . . a Sunday. Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler argues that it was not a Sunday, as Watson would not have felt compelled to state that the workmen were not at Stoke Moran if it were a Sunday, as the assumption would have been obvious to the reader. Yet Watson does not tell us that it was Sunday, so we have no basis for making Zeisler’s assumption. Zeisler also argues against Sunday, stating that Holmes could not have visited the Doctors Commons to check out Roylott on a Sunday . . . which I think shows little faith in the resources and connections of Sherlock Holmes. A regular person might not have been able to do the research on a Sunday, but the master detective on a mission of immediate life-or-death importance? That is another story. Quarter past seven is only a resentful hour to young bachelors on the morning after their Saturday night recreations, and thus I’m sticking this tale on Sunday, April 1, 1883. 

Was SPEC the true first case of working with Holmes that Watson recorded? I find nothing in SPEC that disproves my earlier assertion in the STUD Chronology Corner. Watson’s confession that he promised to keep this tale secret until after a certain lady’s death gives him a good reason for using STUD first, even though SPEC was the more remarkable tale . . . perhaps even the thing that inspired him to start writing up Holmes’s cases to begin with. He surely must have had the writing of it in mind while he was still in contact with Helen Stoner, or else the promise not to write of it would not have even come up. And that promise also shows us exactly why he decided to publish STUD first . . . all of the main players in the crime are dead by the time the case is done.

In VEIL, Watson makes the statement, "When one considers that Sherlock Holmes was in active practice for twenty-three years, and that during seventeen of these I was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings . . ." Knowing that Watson was doing so in September of 1903 (CREE), subtracting the three years when Watson thought Holmes dead, one gets the year 1883 as the year that Holmes started allowing Watson to "cooperate with him." Unless one can prove a falling out between the two during some other period, I think the VEIL statement backs up my assertion of SPEC’s claim to being the prime Canonical tale.

Having said all that, I’ll go one step further and proclaim April Fool’s Day as a new Sherlockian holiday . . . the day our Canon truly begins. Not in the Afghan war, not as Watson graduated from medical school, and not as he and Holmes became room-mates, innocent of each other’s career plans. It all truly began on a day when Holmes woke a resentful Watson from a peaceful morning-after slumber to head into what is perhaps THE classic among their adventures together. On April Fool’s Day . . .

"The Musgrave Ritual"

The Musgrave Ritual.

The case begins Thursday, June 23, 1881.

Why?

TIME PASSES ON BAKER STREET:
"It was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them." "Month after month his papers accumulated until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner."

SEASON OF THE TELLING:
"I have some papers here," said my friend Sherlock Holmes as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his commonplace book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable."

THE STORY’S PLACE IN HOLMES’S BOX OF CASES: "Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminum crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here—ah, now, this really is something a little recherche." "He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest . . ."

REFERENCES TO OTHER CASES:
"You may remember how the affair of the Gloria Scott, and my conversation with the unhappy man whose fate I told you of, first turned my attention in the direction of the profession which has become my life’s work." "Even when you knew me first, at the time of the affair which you have commemorated in ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ I had already established a considerable, though not a very lucrative, connection."

HOLMES’S RESIDENCE AT THE TIME OF THE CASE: "When I first came up to London I had rooms in Montague Street, just round the corner from the British Museum . . ."

THE SOURCE OF THE CASE:
"Now and again cases came in my way, principally through the introduction of old fellow-students, for during my last years at the university there was a good deal of talk there about myself and my methods. The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave Ritual . . ."

LENGTH OF TIME SINCE HOLMES SAW MUSGRAVE: "For four years I had seen nothing of him until one morning he walked into my room in Montague Street."

TIME SINCE MUSGRAVE’S FATHER DIED:
"He was carried off about two years ago."

THE MONTHS OF BRUNTON’S LOVE LIFE:
"A few months ago we were in hopes that he was about to settle down again, for he became engaged to Rachel Howells, our second housemaid; but he has thrown her over since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis . . ."

THE SOMETIMES-SUPPRESSED COUPLET:
"What was the month?"
"Sixth from the first."

THE DAY MUSGRAVE CATCHES BRUNTON:
"One day last week—on Thursday night, to be more exact."

BRUNTON’S PLEA FOR TIME:
"Only a week, sir? A fortnight—say at least a fortnight!"

THE DAYS AFTER MUSGRAVE CAUGHT BRUNTON:
"For two days after this Brunton was most assiduous in his attention to his duties. I made no allusion to what had passed and waited with some curiosity to see how he would cover his disgrace. On the third morning, however, he did not appear . . ."

DAYS AFTER BRUNTON’S DISAPPEARANCE THAT RACHEL DISAPPEARS: 
"For two days Rachel Howells had been so ill, sometimes delirious, sometimes hysterical, that a nurse had been employed to sit up with her at night. On the third night after Brunton’s disappearance, the nurse, finding her patient sleeping nicely, had dropped into a nap . . ."

DAYS AFTER RACHEL’S DISAPPEARANCE BEFORE HOLMES CALLED IN: 
"Although we made every possible search and inquiry yesterday, we know nothing of the fate either of Rachel Howells or of Richard Brunton."

HOLMES GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS:
"The same afternoon saw us both at Hurlstone."

ORIGINS OF HURLSTONE:
"Over the low, heavy-lintelled door, in the centre of this old part, is chiselled the date, 1607, but experts are agreed that the beams and stonework are really much older than this."

AGE OF THE OAK:
"It was there at the Norman Conquest in all probability." 

TIME WITHOUT AN ELM:
"It was struck by lightning ten years ago."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 2, 1879. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 2, 1879.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
This pretty little puzzle was handled with such impressive mathematical and cosmological skill by Ernest Bloomfield Zeisler that even Baring-Gould bowed to his mastery in The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. But the Smash must follow a different path, as always, and this time that path leads all the way back to Charles the First.

"What was the month?" asks the ancient ritual, in a passage mysteriously suppressed in many editions. The answer: "Sixth from the first." And while others might debate what exactly was the first month on the calendar back in 1649 A.D., my preferred thought is that "the first" refers to the man whom this whole ritual revolves around: Charles the First. While some might argue that he wasn’t called "Charles the First" immediately following his death, the passage merely refers to "the first," and, indeed, Charles was first in the minds of his followers, and as Holmes says, the advent of Charles II was already foreseen. Charles the First died on January 30, 1649. Six months later would have been June 30.

After dating "The Gloria Scott" in July of 1880 and discussed Holmes meeting Watson in the summer of 1881 back when A Study in Scarlet was the topic, it seems that I’m going to have to go with June of 1881 for this case’s placement. Brunton begs for "at least a fortnight" more on the job, presumably to finish his treasure hunt — a treasure hunt that needs to be performed on as close to June 30th as possible. A fortnight (fourteen days) before that is June 16th, a Thursday. (How perfect is that? Brunton was discovered on a Thursday.) Counting the days in Musgrave’s narrative, it then follows that Holmes took up the case on Thursday, June 23, 1881 — just in time to recreate the ritual on his own.

"A Study in Scarlet"

A Study in Scarlet.

The case begins Tuesday, March 4, 1884.

Why?

SIGNIFICANT YEAR REFERENCE:
"In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London . . ."

SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL TIE-IN:
"I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand." (June 27, 1880.)

SIGNIFICANT PASSAGE OF TIME:
"I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar . . . improved . . . was struck down by enteric fever . . . . For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself . . . I was despatched . . . landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it . . . London . . .There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand . . . I soon realized . . . that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living."

SIGNIFICANT YEAR REFERENCE OF QUESTIONABLE VALUE: 
"There was the case of Von Bischoff at Frankfort last year." 

KEY WATSON DATE OF CASE:
"It was upon the 4th of March, as I have good reason to remember, that I rose somewhat earlier than usual, and found that Sherlock Holmes had not yet finished his breakfast." 

KEY HISTORICAL REFERENCE OF THE CASE:
"I want to go to Halle’s concert to hear Norman Neruda this afternoon."

SEEMING BAD REPORTAGE BY THE STANDARD:
"The two bade adieu to their landlady upon Tuesday, the 4th inst., and departed to Euston Station with the avowed intention of catching the Liverpool express. They were afterwards seen together upon the platform. Nothing more is known of them until Mr. Drebber’s body was, as recorded, discovered in an empty house in the Brixton Road, many miles from Euston."

LESTRADE CONFIRMS WATSON:
"They had been seen together at Euston Station about half-past eight on the evening of the 3rd. At two in the morning Drebber had been found in the Brixton Road."
"On Thursday the prisoner will be brought before the magistrates, and your attendance will be required."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
March 4, 1881. Of course, Bring-Gould’s original thought in a 1948 BSJ was March 4, 1882. Methinks he bowed to popular opinion.

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 4, 1881. He does reiterate a nice point about Holmes and Watson meeting at Bart’s on January 1st, because the lab was empty, something we might make use of later.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Call me contrary, but certain warped impulse has always made me want to go with that "bad" Standard date. As March 4 fell on a Tuesday in 1884, The Standard would seem to be placing the date at March 4, 1884. If Watson copied from actual newspaper clippings in his scrapbook, this could be a very reliable date. It would mean, of course, that "Speckled Band" actually took place *before* the Drebber-Stangerson murders, and Watson’s desire to write a novel of tragic romance in America caused him to condense time in his first chronicle of Holmes, making a later case his first with the detective.

In his original introduction to "The Date Being . . ." Andrew Jay Peck makes a good case for the Moriarty-involved opening of The Valley of Fear having been transplanted on to the Birlstone case, which didn’t necessarily involve Moriarty. He cites the precedence of the mind-reading passage from "The Resident Patient," which we all know was transplanted from the suppressed tale "The Cardboard Box." I think a good case can be similarly made for separating the "meeting Sherlock Holmes" portion of STUD from the "Drebber case" portion. The coincidence of Holmes getting a letter from Gregson just as the consulting detective concludes an explanation of his trade seems a bit much (like something from fiction, for heaven’s sake!), but the transplant notion explains even that quite nicely.

I have to conclude that the initial meeting, the days of Watson studying Holmes, and the incident of the article "The Book of Life" all took place some time long before Tuesday, March 4, 1884, the obvious beginning of the true Study in Scarlet.

"The Yellow Face"

The Yellow Face.

The case begins Saturday, March 29, 1884.

Why?

HOLMES’S CURRENT STATE:
"Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen."

THE FRIENDSHIP’S CURRENT STATE:
"For two hours we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately. It was nearly five before we were back in Baker Street once more."

NATURE’S CURRENT STATE:
"One day in early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with me in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms, and the sticky spear-heads of the chestnuts were just beginning to burst into their fivefold leaves."

GRANT MUNRO’S AGE:
"I should have put him at about thirty, though he was really some years older."

EFFIE MUNRO’S AGE:
"I am a married man and have been so for three years.
"She was a widow when I met her first, though quite young—only twenty-five."
"She had only been six months at Pinner when I met her; we fell in love with each other, and we married a few weeks afterwards."

THE TIMETABLE OF THE NEW NEIGHBOURS:
"Well, about six weeks ago she came to me."
"Well, last Monday evening I was taking a stroll down that way when I met
an empty van coming up the lane . . . it was clear that the cottage had
at last been let."
"All the rest of the night I tossed and tumbled, framing theory after theory, each more unlikely than the last."
"I should have gone to the City that day, but I was too disturbed in my
mind to be able to pay attention to business matters . . ." 
"For two days after this I stayed at home . . . . On the third day, however, I had ample evidence that her solemn promise was not enough to hold her back from this secret influence which drew her away from her husband and her duty.
"I had gone into town on that day . . ."
"That was yesterday, Mr. Holmes . . ."
"In that case I shall come out to-morrow and talk it over with you. But we had not a very long time to wait for that. It came just as we had finished our tea."

PHOTO TIME FOR THE MUNROS:
". . . a full-length photograph of my wife, which had been taken at my request only three months ago."

WHAT ZEISLER, KING OF CHRONOLOGY SAYS:
A Saturday near April 1, 1885 or 1886

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
Saturday, April 7, 1888

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
When placing this case in the years of Holmes and Watson’s cohabitation, much has been made of Watson’s words, "we rambled about together, in silence for the most part, as befits two men who know each other intimately." But their current level of intimacy really make any difference to Sherlock Holmes, who kept to himself on a regular basis? Watson didn’t have any choice but to become comfortable with Holmes’s silences very quickly, so I don’t think that line can fairly be used as a solid criteria for dating the tale.

Much more important, in my mind, is the reference to Holmes’s incredible strength and boxing ability. According to A Study in Scarlet, Watson learned of Holmes’s boxing abilities before he knew of Holmes’s line of work. As boxing was one of the few points of social contact Holmes engaged in during college, it’s not surprising that he and Watson made contact on that point early on. We know Holmes was boxing actively four years before The Sign of the Four, but past that, there is little evidence of it.

Going by Holmes’s physical condition, and Watson’s comments on it, I would have to date this case as early as possible, before the drug experimentation, before the cases that would cause him to collapse utterly. In 1883, at the time of SPEC, we know Holmes’s strength was poker-bendingly healthy, and that surely held out until 1884. Why 1884?

Starting with the day Grant Munro’s neighbors moved in, a Monday, it is easy to count the days in this story and find that Munro called upon Holmes on a Saturday. Which Saturday?

Well, there’s that photo that Grant asked his wife to have taken of her "three months before." And when would a man be asking his wife for a photograph? Christmas naturally suggests itself, and that would be the time Munro would think of as when his wife had it taken, regardless of when the actual photo session was. And three months later puts us right in that time when those green shoots are appearing on the trees: Saturday, March 29, 1884.

(Why 1884, and not 1883? Because in 1883 three months after Christmas would put this case at the same time as "Speckled Band" was set at in an earlier Chronology Corner.)

"The Red Circle"

The Red Circle.

The case begins Tuesday, January 6, 1885.

Why?

THE STATE OF HOLMES’S BUSINESS:
"I really have other things to engage me."
"So spoke Sherlock Holmes and turned back to the great scrapbook in which he was arranging and indexing some of his recent material."

A PREVIOUS CASE:
"You arranged an affair for a lodger of mine last year," she said — "Mr. Fairdale Hobbs."

LUCCA’S ARRIVAL:
"You say that the man came ten days ago and paid you for a fortnight’s board and lodging?"
"He has been there for ten days, and neither Mr. Warren, nor I, nor the girl has once set eyes upon him."

HOLMES’S DAILY ROUTINE:
"He took down the great book in which, day by day, he filed the agony columns of the various London journals."

THE SCHEDULE OF PERSONAL ADS:
"That is two days after Mrs. Warren’s lodger arrived."
"Yes, here we are — three days later."
"Nothing for a week after that. Then comes something much more definite ..."
"That was in yesterday’s paper, and there is nothing in to-day’s."

MRS. WARREN’S TIME AT HER CURRENT RESIDENCE: 
"Well, we’ve lived there fifteen years and no such happenings ever came before."

STATEMENT OF THE SEASON:
". . . the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one gray curtain . . ."

THE LUCCAS’ AMERICAN PERIOD:
"We fled together, were married at Bari, and sold my jewels to gain the money which would take us to America. This was four years ago, and we have been in New York ever since."

THE STATEMENT OF THE NIGHT, BY COMPOSER:
"By the way, it is not eight o’clock, and a Wagner night at Covent Garden! If we hurry, we might be in time for the second act."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
September 24, 1902. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
Winter 1895-1901.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
"Winter" is the only plain reference to the date Watson gives us in this tale, and a very weak reference it is. Holmes mentions "Wagner night at Convent Garden," but was he necessarily referring to Richard Wagner? For all we know he could have known a cellist named Violet Wagner whose part in the orchestra he especially liked to hear no matter what was being played. So we must once again turn to the subtler details to date this case.

Holmes claims he has "other things to engage me," but does he really mean other cases? Given the focused, driven aspect of Holmes’s personality, would he be pasting clippings into his scrapbook if he really had a case to occupy him? In fact, the very act of clipping agony columns to past in a scrapbook fairly sings of a younger Holmes, just starting out in his career, taking in all possible data which might be useful to him. For the later, busier Holmes of the 1890s, clipping agony columns surely didn’t balance benefits versus time spent enough to really be of profit to him.

Another sign of a younger Holmes is the way Sherlock is excited to meet the Pinkerton, Mr. Leverton, who seems to be the famous one in that exchange. Leverton doesn’t appear to have heard of Holmes at all, while Holmes is quite the fan. 

A third element that marks this as an earlier case is Inspector Gregson. Gregson doesn’t make any documentable appearances after Holmes’s hiatus that ended in 1894. He is the first detective in the Canon to summon Holmes. He is Scotland Yard’s smartest in Holmes’s opinion, and the two men get along wonderfully. Which leads one to wonder why Holmes was working with Lestrade alone at the time of "The Final Problem." We see Gregson investigating organized crime in REDC and suddenly he’s gone in FINA, a tale of Holmes’s biggest battle against organized crime. Might Gregson have been killed by Moriarty during the late 1880s? I think so. Past "Greek Interpreter" in 1888, Watson only mentions Gregson in "Wisteria Lodge" in 1892 — a case wherein Watson was hallucinating the presence of Holmes himself, another of Moriarty’s victims. I think the Gregson of 1892 might have even been a ghost from Watson’s distraught mind overlaid upon another Scotland Yarder.

Yet why is this younger Holmes so reluctant to look into Mrs. Warren’s case? In those days he was all for the commonplace matters and not being put off by anyone’s personal qualities. The best excuse I can find for young Holmes looking to spend a lazy day at Baker Street is that it’s his birthday, and with that, and the previous considerations in mind, I’m going to place this one on Tuesday, January 6, 1885.

"The Beryl Coronet"

The Beryl Coronet.

The case begins Friday, February 26, 1886.

Why?

WATSON’S CURRENT PLACE OF RESIDENCE:
"Holmes," said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window . . .

STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day before still lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the wintry sun."

THE DAYS OF THE TRANSACTION:
"Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a card was brought in . . ."
"Next Monday I have a large sum due to me . . ."
"I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely certain that I should be able in four days to reclaim it."
"I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and I shall call for it in person on Monday morning."

AGES AND TIMES OF THE HOLDER FAMILY:
"He was a man of about fifty . . ."
"She is my niece; but when my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the world I adopted her . . ."
"She is four-and-twenty."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
December 19, 1890. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
February 19, 1886.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
While my usual method is to follow Watson’s dates and let marriages sort themselves out later, "Beryl Coronet" is the first example of a situation where Watson’s marital status must be used to help determine part of the date. We know it is February and Watson is unmarried and at Baker Street, speaking of "our bow-window." As the tale was published in 1892, that bachelor limitation holds us to the years 1882 thru 1887.

Within that six year span, I would conjecture that 1886 is the most likely suspect, for one reason and one reason alone: Holder’s client has that large sum of money coming due on Monday. And while Monday is a fine day for debts to come due, I think it much more likely that the first of the month was the real day that the debt came due. As March 1st fell on a Monday in 1886, I would then place this case’s beginning on Friday, February 26, 1886.