"The Veiled Lodger"

The Veiled Lodger.

The case begins Tuesday, September 22, 1896.

Why?

THE LENGTH OF HOLMES’S CAREER:
"When one considers that Mr. 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, it will be clear that I have a mass of material at my command."

THE STATEMENT OF THE YEAR:
"One forenoon — it was late in 1896 — I received a hurried note from Holmes asking for my attendance."

LENGTH OF THE VEILED LODGING:
"You say that Mrs. Ronder has been your lodger for seven years and that you have only once seen her face."

THE DAYS OF RONDER:
"He was the rival of Wombwell, and of Sanger, one of the greatest showmen of his day."

THE PERIOD OF THE TRAGEDY:
"On this particular night, seven years ago, they both went, and a very terrible happening followed, the details of which have never been made clear."

WATSON’S LOCATION DURING THE TRAGEDY:
"And yet you were with me then."

THE DOINGS OF THE CIRCUS:
"They were on their way to Wimbledon, travelling by road, and they were simply camping and not exhibiting, as the place is so small a one that it would not have paid them to open."

THE DELAY OF THE INVESTIGATION:
"It was six months before she was fit to give evidence, but the inquest was duly held, with the obvious verdict of death from misadventure."

THE END OF LEONARDO:
"He was drowned last month when bathing near Margate. I saw his death in the paper."

WATSON CHECKS UP ON HOLMES:
"Two days later, when I called upon my friend, he pointed with some pride to a small blue bottle upon his mantelpiece."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
October 1896. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS: 
October 1896.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
Finding the date of "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger" seems to be intimately connected to finding the date of the original Abbas Parva tragedy. Previous chronologists have used Watson’s presence at Baker Street as a key indicator in this search, but the true answers lie far from that locale, as far away as the circus itself where the tragedy occurred.

Mrs. Ronder’s worsening mental state would have to be attributed to a powerful combination of two events: the death notice of Leonardo the strong man and the coming anniversary of the tragedy itself. So when did the tragedy occur? Though we generally think of circuses running in a season from March to October, I’ve run into at least one source that mentions Boxing Day, December 26, as the official start of the circus season. While that may seem plenty early, Ronder’s fellow showman George Sanger ran his circus for a nine-month season, which — if it indeed began in late December to catch the holiday crowds — would bring it to an end as October rolled around. 

If October meant the end of the circus season for Ronder’s Wild Beast Show, it would make sense that Eugenia and Leonardo wanted to kill Ronder before the season’s end, sometime in late September. If the tragedy’s anniversary fell in late September, and Eugenia Ronder’s dread of it began earlier in the month, Leonardo’s death while swimming would have occurred, quite naturally, in August, a fine month for swimming.

As the Ronder show was "camping and not exhibiting" on the night of the tragedy, one would expect it to be a Sunday night — the traditional night off for circuses of the day — as even near a small town, a slavedriver like Ronder would hope to pick up a few coins. With the Wimbledon shows still ahead of them, that would most likely place the tragedy on Sunday, September 22, 1889.

"On this particular night, seven years ago," Holmes says with enough appropriate drama to make one believe that the day Mrs. Merrilow has come to see them is the actual anniversary of the tragedy: Tuesday, September 22, 1896.

(Watson says "it was late in 1896," yes, but the remark is so casual as to let one believe in could be anywhere in the later half of 1896, and September certainly qualifies.)