Chronology part 10

Chronology of these short stories

• BOSC - June 1889. June 3rd is a Monday, and Holmes was called in Thursday or Friday.
• IDEN - Monday June 17th 1889 to the next day. The wedding was on Friday the 14th. Another option would be February 1890, to have the Friday wedding on Valentine's day.
• TWIS - July 19, 1889. (Watson says June 19th, but the July is actually on Friday.)
• ENGR - summer 1889

Holmes sends Watson a telegram at about 10:45 AM to invite him to Boscombe Valley, if he has a couple of days to spare for the mystery. For once, Watson is hesitant to neglect work, and his wife has to convince him to go. She says that Anstruther would take his medical practice for him. It is unclear if Anstruther is the same as Jackson, who was the neighbour doctor in CROO. Leaving breakfast, Watson soon packs a bag and meets Holmes at the train station at 11:15 AM. Holmes is glad to see him, and he didn't already purchase both their tickets, so I guess he didn't assume Watson would come. At least he was aware that 30 minutes is not much notice, though it is more notice than he gives Watson in other cases. They ride the train together and discuss the case.

The mystery is similar to GLOR, in that there is a wealthy old man from Australia, and there's a blackmailer who threatens to reveal secrets about how the fortune was made. James McCarthy is accused of killing his father after they had an argument by Boscombe Pool. Holmes says the murder happened on June 3rd, a Monday, so that fits with 1889. The murder happened at about 3 PM, and one of the witnesses is Patience Moran, a 14-year-old girl that is sometimes linked by pastiche to Colonel Sebastian Moran. There was an inquest on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the magistrates referred the case to the Assizes (the higher court). So today might be Thursday or later. But does the fact that Watson was still having breakfast at 10:45 AM mean that it's the weekend like Saturday or Sunday?

Alice Turner, who is the daughter of the wealthy neighbor John Turner, is sure that James McCarthy is innocent of murder. She has somehow "retained" Lestrade to come out and investigate the case. I don't understand how a private citizen can hire a Scotland Yard detective. In any case, Lestrade has called in Holmes; "hence it is that two middle-aged gentlemen are flying westward at fifty miles an hour instead of quietly digesting their breakfasts at home." I think Holmes is only 35, if his 1854 birthdate is correct. Is that still middle-aged? I thought middle age was 40 back then, but I may be mistaken. Holmes deduces about Watson's shaving habits, but I wonder why Mrs. Watson didn't comment on his "slovenly" shave, if it's so obvious. The other clues in the case are the Australian cry of Cooee, a gray coat in James's peripheral vision that disappeared, and then the dying words "a rat" which turn out to mean Ballarat. The name of Hatherley Farm will be used again in ENGR for a surname. Alice's father John is about 60 years old and dying of diabetes apparently.

After a couple of days investigating, Holmes gets the murderer's confession after lunch, but he lets him go free. The Black Jack of Ballarat stuff happened in the 1860s apparently, and Holmes declines to judge him, referring to a higher court he'll have to face on death. Then Holmes somehow gets James McCarthy acquitted without using the signed confession, and John Turner dies 7 months later. Watson claims that James McCarthy and Alice Turner have a happy ending in ignorance of the truth, but if he's publishing the case in 1891, that truth would be revealed to them. Unless Watson is using false names, and has changed other details to disguise it. Perhaps that's where the "hiring Lestrade" error comes from. Trying to explain why Lestrade would be so far from London, but doing it in a clumsy, impossible way.

Moving on to Mary Sutherland's case, I have mentioned IDEN before, regarding the reference to SCAN, and how REDH refers to it. So I discount the reference to the King of Bohemia as Watson promoting his other stories for sale. There is a way to fix it in fanfic, but I will ignore that for chronology purposes. Holmes opens the story with his fanciful speech on flying hand in hand with Watson and peeking at all the queer things going on in the world, and I find it very sweet. It's almost as if Watson is still living with him, but Holmes says that he hasn't seen Watson for some weeks. As if to further confirm, Watson later leaves Baker Street and doesn't return until 6 PM the next day. So this seems to be post-marriage, while Watson is a practicing doctor; he even mentions a grave case with a patient.

IDEN itself doesn't have anything to date it except the news advert saying that Hosmer Angel has been missing since the 14th. Mary Sutherland put that in after the attempted wedding on Friday. I am not sure whether Mary waited until Monday to consult Holmes, but I think she does have to wait a couple of days at least hoping for an answer to her advert. Available dates for the Friday wedding are September 14th and December 14th of 1888, June 14th of 1889, and February 14th and March 14th of 1890. I chose the 1889 date to avoid collision with Watson's extended visit in FIVE. The December date could have worked I suppose, post-HOUN, but this story felt more like spring or summer to me. I didn't like the 1890 dates. In any case, the ending of the tale is infuriating, and one hopes that Watson published the tale to defy Holmes and reveal the truth to the poor lady. (Or that Mary Watson reached out to Mary Sutherland to help.)

TWIS contains another glimpse of Watson's household in Paddington, and Mary's school friend Kate Whitney arrives that night due to Isa Whitney being on an opium binge longer than usual. Mary also famously calls Watson "James," leading to Dorothy Sayers's theory that John's middle name is Hamish, the Scottish version of James. Another Sherlockian posited that "James" is the name of their infant son, and Mary was suggesting that John take James up to bed. I don't remember which Sherlockian this was, but I'm just pointing out that there are many options available. When John finds Isa in the opium den, he says it's Friday June 19th, but Isa protests that it's Wednesday. In fact Isa is right. June 19, 1889 is a Wednesday. So I shifted this case to July 19th, which is a Friday. Watson then goes off with Holmes and only sends a note home with Isa Whitney. Holmes tells him the story of Neville St Clair's disappearance on Monday, and it appears that his wife doesn't receive the note with the ring until Friday. We don't know why Holmes decided to stay at the Cedars house in Kent, if he needed to be in the opium den in London. There are certain Sherlockians who imply that Mrs. St. Clair was trying to romance Holmes, but it seems clear to me that she mistook Watson for her husband and was excited to see him, until she realized her mistake. She was anxious to see her husband, not Holmes.

Despite the double-bedded room, Holmes stays up smoking all night while Watson sleeps. Then who cares about how many beds there are? Why not smoke in a different room with the window open, so as to not disturb his friend? Anyway, then Holmes gets up early in the morning on Saturday with Watson and solves the case at the police station, before inviting Watson to breakfast at Baker Street. We don't know what happens to the St. Clairs after that; we don't even know what happened to the driver John, who brought the dog-cart to Holmes at the opium den and was supposed to meet him the next morning. Talk about unexplained mysteries. Anyway, given how abruptly Watson left his patient on Friday night, I think Mary Watson should have been mad at her husband by the time he came home the next day. But Watson ends the tale before going home, so we don't know about that either.

Watson opens ENGR by saying that he only brought two cases to Holmes over the years, that of Victor Hatherly's thumb, and Colonel Warburton's madness. This is not true, though. NAVA was definitely a case that Watson brought to Holmes, via Percy Phelp's letter. Scotland Yard had almost 10 weeks to solve the missing treaty case, but they never consulted Holmes in that time; clearly Watson was the one who the brought the case to Holmes. Of course, the explanation is that NAVA was published in late 1893, over a year after ENGR in 1892. But it shows that Watson will lie if he thinks at the moment that he won't publish a certain case in the future, like how Watson lied in FINA that he didn't know Moriarty, because he didn't think he'd publish VALL in future.

In ENGR, Watson says that it takes place in the summer of 1889 "not long after my marriage." This supports SIGN in 1888 rather than in 1887, but I'm sticking with my placement of SIGN. There are too many damn cases taking place in summer post-marriage. Watson at least tells us that Holmes occasionally visits Paddington, so I'm placing this after CROO. Watson's practice has steadily increased, and he has cured a railway guard of some illness, so this guy brings many patients from the nearby train station to Watson. One morning before 7AM, the guard brings Victor Hatherley, the hydraulic engineer, with a missing thumb. Watson treats his terrible injury, and upon learning that the amputation was no accident, he decides to bring the fellow to Sherlock Holmes. Watson's maid calls a cab while he explains things to his wife, and they leave in about five minutes.

Fortunately, Holmes is awake and invites them to breakfast. Then they listen to Hatherley's narration of his adventure with the secret counterfeit coiners. This is another case where Holmes does little detecting or deducing. They eventually recruit Inspector Bradstreet from Scotland Yard, take the train to Eyford, and discover the house still on fire. So it's not like we needed Holmes's deduction of the place. I'm amazed that the house burned all night until sunset the next day. The villains got away, and it's another weird case that Watson chose for dramatic events rather than mystery.