Did Kit get Lemony's message inside TSS?

[Tiago James Squalor]

We all know that Lemony sent Kit a secret message inside TSS, asking her to meet him at the last sanctuary, Hotel Denouement. But did Kit really get the message? If so, why did she not stay at the hotel with the Baudelaires? If she had stayed, perhaps Dewey's death would never have happened.

[Dante]

Well, that depends on a number of things. When you think Lemony's writing the books, and/or when he wrote that message. Whether or not Handler changed the plot from what he'd previously anticipated between TSS and TPP. Whether one should ignore things like a statement from Kit in The End which implies that she believes Lemony is dead. I think you have a choice of readings; one perfectly valid one would be that Kit was far too busy to ever get or respond to Lemony's message, thus making it a tragic reaching-out for a sibling who would shortly be lost forever. Or that Lemony didn't know that Kit was already dead. Or that Kit got the message and they met off-screen before the start of TPP, because if you believe Lemony is Justice Strauss's taxi-driver then they were both in the vicinity at the same time.

I don't really have a concrete answer. You should invent your own.

[thedoctororwell]

From what she said in TPP, I got the impression that Kit seemed to know a little too much about what actually happened in the Mortmain Mountains... Too much details, too much precision. My idea is that Lemony documented and pit together a quick draft of TSS somewhere during the events of TGG, and that by the time Kit contacted the Baudelaires she had already read it. It's a little time-stretched, but at the same time, Lemony tells Kit to come to the Hotel Dénouement in TSS, which happens a few days before TPP ; Lemony would not tell someone to meet him at a place that is already destroyed, wouldn't he ? Especially since it doesn't take much investigation to know the hotel has been burned down.
Kit was a rotten liar in TPP anyway. She obviously knew about Dewey, but still, she didn't speak about him to the Baudelaires. She had received Lemony's message, but there are a number of reasons she didn't get to meet him. She was paranoid about "impostors," as TPP shows. She may also have thought she had the time to resolve the Quagmire/Widdershins situation, then come back to the Hotel. Maybe she was waiting during the whole pique-nique for Lemony to show up and decided it was enough. Maybe she had asked Dewey to give her updates about Lemony and he simply didn't seem him.
This gets even more complicated if you speculate that Lemony was the cigarette-smoking man/JS/both. Maybe Lemony was very busy and simply had no time to reunite with his sister.
In my opinion, the taxi Kit was running away from in TPP was the one transporting Jérôme and Strauss, and Lemony/JS/the cigarette-smoking man was driving it. Oh the irony !

[Hermes]

The idea of L writing drafts as the story goes on, which he expands later, makes a lot of sense - it's the best way of overcoming the anomalies with the date of writing, I think. On the other hand, couldn't Kit have got her knowledge of what happened in the mountains from Quigley?

As to why K didn't meet L - well, we don't know exactly when the date he set for the meeting (Beatrice's birthday) was. Perhaps it was Thursday, the day they expected all the volunteers to meet for the trial. So Kit went away to look for Captain Widdershins, and Lemony went away with the sugar bowl, both expecting to be back by then - but of course by then the hotel had been destroyed.

[Grant]

Dec 7, 2009 15:08:10 GMT -5 thedoctororwell said:

In my opinion, the taxi Kit was running away from in TPP was the one transporting Jérôme and Strauss, and Lemony/JS/the cigarette-smoking man was driving it. Oh the irony !

That would be ironic.

My guess is that since Lemony is always in disguise, he might have been at the Hotel but Kit didn't recognize him.

[thedoctororwell]

Ah, true - Quigley updated her on the situation. But the timing of the letter still suggests she may have received it.
We know that Kit is an active reader of Asoue, even in its most early days. In LSUA she gives Asoue copies to her Prufrock Prep students - so she's at least aware that someone is publishing the series under her brother's name and investigates the Baudelaire case - and, apparently, she trusts his identity enough to consider the series as accurate.

[Christmas Chief]

Although in TPP, she says she's barely had time to update her commonplace book (let alone read TSS), so maybe that has something to do with it?

[Hermes]

Dec 7, 2009 15:08:10 GMT -5 thedoctororwell said:

In my opinion, the taxi Kit was running away from in TPP was the one transporting Jérôme and Strauss, and Lemony/JS/the cigarette-smoking man was driving it. Oh the irony !

Strauss says near the end that she was in the taxi behind Kit and the Baudelaires; and it's quite likely Lemony was driving, as he (if he's the cigarette-smoking man) appears driving her and Jerome later. I'm not so sure about Jerome - we know that one of the JS's checked in the night before, and I take that to be Jerome (though I suppose it might be Olaf in disguise).

Why do you think Lemony might be JS, though? I thought it became fairly clear that JS is (apart from Jacques Snicket), Jerome Squalor and Justice Strauss, and that Olaf was also using the initials to write to Sir (perhaps impersonating Jacques).

[thedoctororwell]

When I said Lemony's JS, I meant he was the actual person supposed to get the sugar bowl, the one Dewey trusted and worked with.
In my opinion JS, was, at first, supposed to be Jacques Snicket ; when he died Lemony took up his mantle and made secret arrangements with Dewey. We know from LSUA that in VFD siblings take over their siblings' business after they die (ex: Sally and Gustav). Lemony assumed the original JS identity.
Then Strauss and Jérôme became involved in VFD and Lemony used them as red herrings to distract suspicions and add confusion. He didn't want to sacrifice them, however, so he stayed close to them, acting as their taxi driver to protect them although they didn't know he really was Lemony and/or JS.
From the beginning JS was supposed to be an imposter anyway... People suspected Jérôme, Strauss and Olaf because they didn't really have any potentially suspicious canditate. Lemony was the perfect surrogate for JS since he was supposed to be dead, or at least out of the country. This kind of plan totally fits with Dewey's way of doing things : he spent the whole of TPP cooking up a plan that didn't have any purpose, except leading everyone's eyes elsewhere while the taxi-driver/JS/Lemony simply waited for the sugar bowl to be carried there another way.

[Christmas Chief]

Dec 9, 2009 14:15:32 GMT -5 Hermes said:

I thought it became fairly clear that JS is (apart from Jacques Snicket), Jerome Squalor and Justice Strauss, and that Olaf was also using the initials to write to Sir (perhaps impersonating Jacques).

Though maybe not so much of Justice Strauss, as "Justice" is her title, and therefore if someone was trying to contact her, I think they'd use her real initials as opposed to her title and last name.

[Dante]

For the purposes of J.S., "Justice" is presumed to function as Justice Strauss's first initial, on the grounds that this is the name she is best known by - not just by the fandom, but within the setting itself.

[Christmas Chief]

Though couldn't we eliminate her, because the first letter of "Justice" isn't essentially considered an initial?

[Hermes]

Justice Strauss does say that she thought the messages people were leaving for 'JS' were for her. So she herself clearly thinks 'JS' could stand for her name.

I think we should see her as one of the JS's. I don't think there is a definite answer to 'Who is JS?' Originally, it was Jacques. But after Jacques's death, various people were using the initials - Strauss and Jerome because those were indeed their initials, and Olaf to cause confusion - and volunteers were trying to work out what they stood for.

The idea that Lemony is one of the JS's is certainly interesting. There is some evidence that there is a fourth JS. Esme's JS, a man lurking aorund the basement, is probably Jerome, and Dewey and Hal's JS, a woman watching the skies, is certainly Strauss. Sir's JS seems to be Olaf. But there's also Charles's JS, who doesn't fit into this pattern. So perhaps that's Lemony.
Kit says at one point that if JS is a noble person, he should get the sugar bowl; and it is Lemony who gets the sugar bowl in the end. Whether that's because he was meant to get it, though, I'm not sure; perhaps it's just that he was the person who realised, at a crucial moment, where it was. (He does mention this kind of realisation.)

One piece of evidence that may be relevant is that it seems likely that he was the person who left the message for JS in the fridge at the Mortmain Mountains HQ. So he probably wasn't thinking of himself as JS at that point.

[Dante]

Dec 10, 2009 16:59:25 GMT -5 Hermes said:

Justice Strauss does say that she thought the messages people were leaving for 'JS' were for her. So she herself clearly thinks 'JS' could stand for her name.

One obvious point I nonetheless forgot to mention is that her first name might start with a J. anyway. But this is aSoUE; there are so many characters who simply don't have both a first and second name. We have to make do with what we're given.

The idea that Lemony is one of the JS's is certainly interesting. There is some evidence that there is a fourth JS. Esme's JS, a man lurking aorund the basement, is probably Jerome, and Dewey and Hal's JS, a woman watching the skies, is certainly Strauss. Sir's JS seems to be Olaf. But there's also Charles's JS, who doesn't fit into this pattern. So perhaps that's Lemony.

What's interesting about the J.S. who wrote to Charles is that they share some overlap with the J.S. who wrote to Mr. Poe - both of them knew about the Baudelaires' submarine trip to Briny Beach, but only a noble person would have notified Charles, and only a wicked person would've notified Mr. Poe. I think Justice Strauss might've been the J.S. who wrote to Charles, since she was pursuing the Baudelaires as they left the beach, but who wrote to Mr. Poe? Olaf would have no interest in doing so.

One piece of evidence that may be relevant is that it seems likely that he was the person who left the message for JS in the fridge at the Mortmain Mountains HQ. So he probably wasn't thinking of himself as JS at that point.

One might equally well argue that the message was for him, though, since he was meant to receive a certain ingredient from that fridge. But the lemonade is usually taken as indicating Lemony, so the J.S. would be superfluous. I suspect the Mortmain Mountains J.S. probably doesn't matter any more; it could be any of them.

[Hermes]

Dec 10, 2009 17:10:10 GMT -5 Dante said:

One piece of evidence that may be relevant is that it seems likely that he was the person who left the message for JS in the fridge at the Mortmain Mountains HQ. So he probably wasn't thinking of himself as JS at that point.

One might equally well argue that the message was for him, though, since he was meant to receive a certain ingredient from that fridge.

I thought he said 'I will never retrieve the pickle from the refrigerator where I left it.'

But the lemonade is usually taken as indicating Lemony, so the J.S. would be superfluous.

Yes - as 'JS' indicates the recipient, I would take the lemon to indicate the sender.

I suspect the Mortmain Mountains J.S. probably doesn't matter any more; it could be any of them.

It's quite likely, I think, that it's no one in particular; just 'the person who leaves messages signed JS'.