"The Problem of Thor Bridge"

The Problem of Thor Bridge.

The case is Thursday, October 4, 1900.

Why?

STATEMENT OF THE MONTH:
"It was a wild morning in October, and I observed as I was dressing how the last remaining leaves were being whirled from the solitary plane tree which graces the yard behind our house."

WATSON’S PLACE OF RESIDENCE:
"I descended to breakfast prepared to find my companion in depressed spirits . . ."

HOLMES’S RECENT PAST:
"After a month of trivialities and stagnation the wheels move once more."

RECENT HIRINGS AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
"There is little to share, but we may discuss it when you have consumed the two hard-boiled eggs with which our new cook has favoured us. Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table."

THE DATE ON THE LETTER AND THE APPOINTMENT SET:
"October 3rd."
"Well, I’ll come at eleven to-morrow . . ."

J. NEIL GIBSON’S CURRENT FINANCIAL RANKING:
"This man is the greatest financial power in the world."

NEIL GIBSON’S TIME IN HAMPSHIRE:
"He bought a considerable estate in Hampshire some five years ago."

LENGTH OF MARIA PINTO GIBSON’S LOVE:
"She adored me in those English woods as she had adored me twenty years ago on the banks of the Amazon."

THE SEASON REITERATED:
"The sun was setting and turning the rolling Hampshire moor into a wonderful autumnal panorama."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 4, 1900. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
October 4, 1901.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Twenty years before "The Adventure of Thor Bridge," a young, passionate J. Neil Gibson was supposedly gold-hunting on the banks of the Amazon River. As he’s romancing a city official’s daughter, we can probably assume he was hunting gold that other people had already found, hence his time spent in the city, rather than the jungle. In the fifteen years that followed, he returned to the United States and was elected to the U.S. Senate for a number of years. After that (as one wouldn’t think he could get elected with such activities in his past) Gibson broke "communities, cities, even nations" in his rabid pursuit of profit, ruining "ten thousand men" in the process. Having surely made enough enemies in America, Gibson moved to England for five years.

And when Dr. Watson first meets him, J. Neil Gibson is looking a lot like Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. As a boy of no more than fourteen at the time of the shocking assassination, Gibson would still regard Lincoln as pure hero, and carry that regard into manhood, doing things like running for Congress and growing a beard to complete his resemblance the Great Emancipator’s best known image, even while indulging in ruthless business practices that were far from Lincoln’s style.

But J. Neil Gibson’s superficial Lincoln-worship didn’t just stop with Congress or a beard. He would also propose to a girl of local social prominence named Mary ("Maria" being the Manaos, Brazil equivalent) at age twenty-nine, just as Lincoln had. Twenty years later, Gibson would regret his arbitrary Lincoln emulating, even though the girl had seemed a perfect catch at the time.
Following this Lincoln-inspired path of J. Neil Gibson’s life, I would place this case in the year 1900, when October 3 fell on a Wednesday, and the case began the following day: Thursday, October 4, 1900.

(This would mean, of course, that the cook had to leave the house to pick up a copy of the Family Herald, which was published on Wednesday, but for the reader ardent enough to screw up breakfast the next morning because she just has to read the latest "love romance," that should pose no problem.)