sixthlight | Moon over Soho timeline

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So I’ve been listening to the Moon over Soho audiobook and trying to work out a timeline (largely in an effort to pin down things about Lesley, which was mostly not helpful) and, wow, I hadn’t realised how short a period it takes place over. The months-long timelines of Rivers of London and Broken Homes lulled me into a false sense of security, but the bulk of the action in MoS takes place over ten days - everything but the very last scene happens over less than three weeks. Also, Peter must have been extremely sleep-deprived by the end of it.

Anyway, since I bothered to work all this out, here it is for posterity/speculation/fanfic purposes:

Day -1 (Tuesday): Cyrus Wilkinson collapses at a gig “the day before yesterday”, so it’s day -1.

Day 1 (a Thursday in mid-September:) Peter visits Lesley in Brightlingsea. This is “two weeks after the end of the school holidays”, so depending on how accurate Peter’s being and when September 1st (the first day of the term) fell it’s anything from September 10th-20th. Probably earlier since it’s still “mid-September” on day 4.

Also that day: Peter examines Cyrus Wilkinson with Dr. Walid and meets Simone for the first time.

Day 2 (Friday, I think): This is hard to pin down because there’s no indication whether the practice with Nightingale is taking place the next day or several days after. Anyway, assuming it is - since it’s the first time they’ve talked about Cyrus Wilkinson - Peter has practice, visits his parents, and learns some exciting facts about the statistical significance of jazz deaths.

Day 3 (Saturday, maybe Friday): Peter meets the Irregulars in the evening, runs into Peggy at a club, and finds Mickey the Bone’s body. It’s described as “Friday night”, but Purdy’s working a “Saturday night shift” and Peter is at UCH with the body “early Sunday morning”, so, um, one of those two. There’s only the one reference to “Friday” so I’m calling that a typo.

Day 4 (Sunday): Peter is called in by Stephanopoulis to examine Jason Dunlop’s body, has breakfast with Nightingale, and recruits Ash to hunt for the Pale Lady. He runs into Simone and eats with her at the patisserie, then meets Tista Ghosh. It’s “mid-September” (so we probably started closer to Sept 10th than 20th.) He arranges for the Irregulars to play with his dad at their gig “next week”, then goes back to examine Dunlop’s books.

Day 5 (Monday): Peter discusses Ethically Challenged Magic with Nightingale over breakfast, then they drive up to Oxford to meet Postmartin, and on to Casterbrook/Ambrose House to get the library cards. On the way back they get the call from Ash about the Pale Lady, and Peter hijacks an ambulance.

Day 6 (Tuesday): Peter does double practice in the morning and couriers the hard copies of their potential Little Crocodile list (the long version) to Lesley to avoid typing it up. (Operational security: what’s that?) He visits Mickey the Bone’s sister Martha, Henry Bellrush’s wife, the lingerie shop, and Alexander Smith, Nightclub Impresario, before running into Simone and going back to her flat.

Day 7 (Wednesday): Peter gets yelled at by both the Commissioner and the tag-team of Tyburn and Oxley. This confirms the Ash incident as happening on “Monday night”, though it’s referred to as “last Monday night”, which is weird unless there’s a whole week between Day 6 and Day 7 that passes without incident…which there can’t be, because of the reference to Cyrus Wilkinson’s death as “less than two weeks ago” as of Day 8. Poor phrasing, then.

He runs into Stephanopoulis investigating the Crossrail construction death which is nothing to do with him (except we later learn this was the Faceless Man, so…) He calls Simone, goes to her place and sleeps with her, then leaves before 10pm.

Day 8 (Thursday): Peter practices scindere successfully, does paperwork while Nightingale watches rugby, then goes to introduce his Dad to the Irregulars. He speaks with Simone on the phone and describes it as “less than two weeks” since Cyrus Wilkinson’s death, which is pretty generous phrasing; it’s been nine days. That afternoon he meets Abigail and is conned into promising to teach her magic, which will doubtless never come back to haunt him. Lesley is in London for an appointment.

Day 9 (Friday): “The next morning” Peter goes to research the Cafe de Paris bombing in the city archives, discusses vampires with Dr. Walid, then visits Alexander Smith a second time. He runs into Simone again and goes back to her place. (I’m actually not sure how he fitted all this into one morning - apparently he’s very efficient on Fridays!) He agrees to take Simone to his dad’s gig next week, goes back to the Folly, talks to Nightingale about “people like Molly”, then is called by Stephanopoulis and taken to Norwich. Lesley calls him, having had a successful operation.

Day 10 (Saturday): Peter wakes up in Norwich after the investigation at Jerry Johnson’s house, catches the train back to London with Stephanopoulis, then they interview Alexander Smith. They raid the Strip Club of Dr. Moreau, find Tony No-Neck dead at Smith’s office, then Peter returns to the police station, finds Smith dead, and chases the Pale Lady and kills her by accident. Nightingale is kept at the hospital overnight

Day 11 (Sunday): Confirmed as Sunday in-text; Peter sleeps in, sees a movie with Simone, and has sex with her in the coach house.

Day 12 (Monday): Peter is interviewed by the DPS, Nightingale is released from hospital, they re-visit the club, and he asks Tyburn about the Little Crocodiles.

Day 13 (Tuesday): Peter learns about Nightingale and the Tigers during practice, then meets Simone at a hotel. His dad’s gig is “tomorrow”; he agrees again she can come. It has now been a whole two weeks since her boyfriend, friend of most of the people who will be there, tragically died, and she and Peter have been enthusiastically shagging for a whole week, so that’s all right then.

Day 14 (Wednesday): They go to the gig at the Archers, Simone’s past is revealed by Peter’s mum, he coaxes the story out of her at the coach house, and she scrambles his brain.

Day 15 (Thursday): Peter and Peter’s dad go to the hospital for MRIs. (This takes a weirdly long time, since the appointment is at eleven but the sun is going down when they leave.) Peter arrives at the Folly to find Frank and the paratroopers there, escapes to warn Simone, and confronts the Faceless Man. This is described as “Friday night”, but it can’t be because every day in between Sunday and today is tagged with “the next morning” when Peter gets up. Apparently every night in Soho is Friday night. He and Nightingale find Simone and her sisters dead at the Cafe de Paris late that night/early Friday morning.

Probably the Monday after (so Day 19): Lord Grant and the Irregulars play a gig “the first Monday in October”, and we started fifteen days before Simone’s death in mid-September, so this basically has to be the next Monday (unless we opened very close to Sept 10th and that Monday was just still in September, in which case it’s the Monday after, Day 26.)

Sometime in the next three weeks: Peter drives out to Brightlingsea and meets Lesley. She can cast a werelight.

Some implications of all this:

- I think if Nightingale hadn’t been sick and Lesley away, someone would have spotted something weird about Peter and Simone earlier. They spend an awful lot of time shagging for two people who live apart and have jobs, and Peter is under a great deal of time pressure in this two-week period. It’s quite possible his failure to connect her to the case is a result not just of magic but sheer sleep deprivation. Either way, it was definitely way too early to be introducing her to his parents - he knew her for two weeks total, and they’d only been in a relationship for a week by the time of the gig at the Arches, ten days if you want to count from the date at the patisserie. When Peter speculates on the possible length of the relationship it’s only been five days since it started.

- Lesley learns magic suprisingly fast; depending upon exactly when that “cold day in October” she demonstrates it to Peter is, she managed to conjure a werelight in something between three and six weeks, and it took Peter six. This makes me a little concerned for her brain - did Peter mention the restrictions on practicing to her? Would she have followed them if she did?

- Looking back at it I’m also surprised how sick Nightingale is throughout this - he’s still in a wheelchair in the early part of the book, but it’s been four months since he was shot. I have no idea whatsoever how fast this is as a recovery time but it seems slow (of course, in the latter part he contracts a chest infection.)

- The Faceless Man moves fast; he’s already looking for Simone and her sisters as of Day 6, Peter’s first visit to Smith, and he’s murdered Smith by Day 10 and is trying very hard to recruit Simone et al. by Day 15. The question I have is how he was tracking them down - does he have access to HOLMES? Did someone else notice them not aging in Soho? Peter is put onto the case by Dr. Walid noticing vestigium on Cyrus Wilkinson’s body, then a statistical pattern emerging…how did the Faceless Man figure it out?

- I’m surprised the DPS haven’t just demanded Peter be fired by now; in one week he’s involved in, count ‘em, six suspicious deaths (the Pale Lady, Alexander Smith, Tiger Boy, Simone, Cherie, and Peggy) and the week before that he hijacked an ambulance. And that’s after the Covent Garden fiasco. He must give them hives. (Then again, I bet Nightingale’s had more than his fair share of DPS attention over the years, when he was the only active member of the Folly.)