"Wisteria Lodge"

Wisteria Lodge.

The case begins Thursday, March 24, 1892.

Why?

STATEMENT OF THE MONTH AND YEAR:
"I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892."
"It is late in March, so quarter-day is at hand."
"It was a cold, dark March evening, with a sharp wind and a fine rain beating upon our faces, a fit setting for the wild common over which our road passed and the tragic goal to which it led us."
"It was about five o’clock, and the shadows of the March evening were beginning to fall, when an excited rustic rushed into our room."

THE INVITATION AND THE VISIT:
"Within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott. Yesterday evening I went to Esher to fulfil this engagement."

DURATION OF THE INVESTIGATION:
"Day succeeded day, and my friend took no step forward. One morning he spent in town, and I learned from a casual reference that he had visited the British Museum."
"I’m sure, Watson, a week in the country will be invaluable to you."
"I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when, some five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large letters . . ."

WHAT THE BARING-GOULD ANNOTATED SAYS:
March 24, 1890. 

WHAT ZEISLER, THE KING OF CHRONOLOGY, SAYS:
March 6, 1902.

THE BIRLSTONE RAILWAY TIMETABLE:
It’s March, that much seems pretty plain. It’s March when the case begins, and it’s March five days later when the case ends. Quarter-day, March 25, is "at hand." Getting as close as we can "towards the end of March," remaining before quarter-day, and having five days left for the investigation, Thursday, March 24, 1892 seems the best candidate for this case’s beginning.

That’s the easy part with this case. The hard part is explaining just how it is that Sherlock Holmes is at Baker Street during the time he was thought dead to all of his countrymen but one, and was, in reality, travelling through Asia. Personally, I’ve always been of the opinion that Watson didn’t take Holmes’s death all that well. He even attempted to carry on the consulting detective business himself for a while, which added to the strain placed upon him. His wife wasn’t in the best of health, as she doesn’t seem to have lived through Holmes’s hiatus. And Mycroft has Mrs. Hudson keeping Holmes’s rooms just as if the detective still lives there. Put all that together, and what do you get?
Watson cracked. In Watson’s mind, Holmes was with him during the investigation of "Wisteria Lodge." (And a couple of Chronology Corners from now, we’ll see that Holmes wasn’t the only person in the story whose presence was a Watsonian delusion.) It explains why Baynes seems to be doing all the work in this case, and Holmes’s peculiar distance from it ... he was, in fact, very, very distant from it altogether. (For those of you who hate to see poor Watson gone temporarily insane, call it an astral projection from the real Holmes who was meditating in Tibet. That works, too.)