"The Valley of Fear"

The Valley of Fear. 

The case begins on Saturday, January 7, 1888.

Why?

WATSON’S KNOWLEDGE OF MORIARTY:
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"

PORLOCK’S PAST PERFORMANCE:
"Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime."

THE STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND DAY:
"Being the seventh of January, we have very properly laid in the new almanac."

THE STATEMENT OF THE DECADE:
"Those were the early days at the end of the ‘80’s, when Alec MacDonald was far from having attained the national fame which he has now achieved."

MACDONALD’S PAST PERFORMANCE:
"Twice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain success . . ."

THE LENGTH OF THE MORIARTY STUDY COURSE:
"Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty."

THE STATE OF HOLMES’S CAREER ACTIVITY:
"A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers . . ."

WATSON’S LITERARY FAME:
"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show you all we know," said White Mason cordially. "Come along, Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we’ll all hope for a place in your book."
"We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes is so well known."
"He took a good look at us all, and then to my amazement he advanced to me and handed me a bundle of paper. ‘I’ve heard of you . . . You are the
historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson, you’ve never had such a story as that pass through your hands before, and I’ll lay my last dollar on that. Tell it your own way; but there are the facts, and you can’t miss the public so long as you have those. "I’ve been cooped up two days, and I’ve spent the daylight hours— as much daylight as I could get in that rat trap — in putting the thing into words. You’re welcome to them — you and your public. There’s the story of the Valley of Fear."

THE YEARS OF DOUGLAS’S LIFE:
"He had been engaged five years before, when Douglas first came to Birlstone."
"How long were you with Douglas in California?" 
"Five years altogether."
"Then when he left so suddenly for Europe . . ."
"That was six years ago?"
"Nearer seven."
"And then you were together five years in California, so that this business dates back not less than eleven years at the least?"
"That is so."
"I guessed I’d fight through it all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about ‘76."

IMPRISONMENT OF THE SCOWRERS:
"For ten years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they were free once more . . ."

THE TIME OF THE INTENDED READING:
"And now, my long-suffering readers . . . I wish you to journey back some twenty years in time . . ."
"It was the fourth of February in the year 1875."

BIRDY EDWARDS’S AGE AT THAT TIME:
"He is . . . not far, one would guess, from his thirtieth year." 

THE TIME OF THE EPILOGUE:
"Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent passed from our minds."
"They started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three weeks ago . . . The ship reached Cape Town last night."

HOLMES’S VOW TO BEAT MORIARTY:
"I don’t say that he can’t be beat. But you must give me time — you must give me time!" 

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
January 7, 1888. 

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

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
We start this tale with a very clear month and day: January 7. The year would then seem a simple calculation using all the dates of John Douglas/Birdy Edwards. He took down the Scowrers in 1875. Scowrer associates who weren’t imprisoned chased him from Chicago (his bit of luck in 1876). He spent five years in California (making it 1881), then "nearly seven" in England, making it early 1888. 
As A Study in Scarlet was published in December of 1887, Watson would have been undergoing his first flush of notoriety as an author in January of 1888, and although the general public wouldn’t have taken to him just yet, you can bet the men of Scotland Yard were all reading about their friends Lestrade and Gregson. Some, like MacDonald, probably even looked forward to a place in Watson’s next book, as his comments show. No mention of short stories just yet!

The Moriarty question is worth mentioning in dating this tale, as Watson’s seeming ignorance of him in "The Final Problem" in 1891 seems to weigh heavily against this case’s authenticity. But looking at Scotland Yard’s treatment of Holmes’s view of Moriarty between the two stories is enlightening on that point. In "The Valley of Fear," the men of the Yard think Holmes has "a bee in his bonnet" about Moriarty. It’s pretty much a joke to them, and Moriarty himself isn’t taking Holmes seriously either. Moriarty might even still have his university chair at this time. Holmes is rather frustrated about the whole thing, as his comments at the tale’s end demonstrate.

By the time of "The Final Problem," however, Holmes seems to have convinced the police of Moriarty’s guilt and the now "ex-Professor" himself now views Holmes as a threat. (One wonders if Holmes wasn’t responsible for those "dark rumors" which cost Moriarty his University job.) But years have passed, in which a married-and-gone Watson has had time to forget about the "scientific criminal" that no one ever took Holmes seriously about. Watson’s quote of Holmes saying, "You never heard . . . ?" was probably a paraphrase of "You don’t remember . . . ?"

Whatever Watson’s reasons for the slip, this case seems pretty solid in starting on Saturday, January 7, 1888.