"The Noble Bachelor"

The Noble Bachelor.

The case begins Thursday, October 6, 1887.

Why?

WATSON’S MARITAL STATE:
"It was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I was still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn to rain, with high autumnal winds . . ."

AND THE SEASON ONCE MORE:
"Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings."

LORD ST. SIMON’S LIFETIME:
"Born in 1846. He’s forty-one years of age . . ."
"Lord St. Simon, who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little god’s arrows . . ."
"As it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to sell his pictures within the last few years . . ."
"It is in the personal column of the Morning Post, and dates, as you see, some weeks back."
"There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society papers of the same week."
"An important addition has been made during the last week to the list of the prizes which have been borne away by these charming invaders."
"When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?"
"In San Francisco, a year ago."
"My wife was twenty before her father became a rich man."
"Her father brought her over for this last London season."

THE WEDDING DAY:
"Two days later--that is, on Wednesday last--there is a curt announcement that the wedding had taken place . . ."
"Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a morning paper of yesterday . . ."
"The ceremony, as shortly announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the previous morning . . ."

FHM’S HOTEL BILL:
"Oct. 4th, rooms 8s., breakfast 2s. 6d., cocktail 1s., lunch 2s. 6d., glass sherry, 8d."
"More valuable still was it to know that within a week he had settled his bill at one of the most select London hotels."

FRANK AND HATTIE’S DATES:
"Frank here and I met in ‘84, in McQuire’s camp, near the Rockies, where pa was working a claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I; but then one day father struck a rich pocket and made a pile . . ."
" . . .then Frank went off to seek his fortune . . ."
" . . . there was my Frank’s name among the killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in ‘Frisco. Not a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to ‘Frisco . . ."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 8, 1886. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
December 7, 1888.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY’S TIMETABLE:
Well, taking Lord St. Simon’s birth year and adding his age (also considering the fact that it’s autumn and his birthday has most likely passed for that year), the case probably takes place in 1887, with 1888 as an outside possibility if his birthday was past mid-October. Frank and Hattie met in 1884, and over two years have passed since that time, seeming to confirm an 1887 or 1888 date.

But then comes the matter of Frank Moulton’s hotel bill for October 4th, used as note-paper for a note he slipped Hattie Doran on the day of her wedding. As the wedding was reported the next day in a Wednesday newspaper, it plainly occurred on a Tuesday. In 1887, October 4 occurs on a Tuesday. In 1888, on a Thursday. As it would seem much more likely for a fellow to be carrying his hotel bill on the same day he received it, rather than sometime the next week, we find confirmation of 1887 as the year.

For Holmes and Watson, then, the case begins two days later, on Thursday, October 6, 1887.