The Swimmer Woman Puzzle

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Now that I am thinking outside the box I had created to think outside the box, I can think of a simpler explanation of what happened to the swimmer. She went down one of the tunnels. She took the SB and swam to Queequeg. Captain W was glad of her arrival. But then she said something that convinced him to leave the submarine immediately. She said "I can't breathe properly" or something. After all, no one seemed to know that the fungus MM was proliferating in GG, so she didn't take proper precautions. Like Sunny, the mysterious woman must have been contaminated. Since Phil was a bad cook, Phil couldn't think of a replacement for poison diluent. Then the three decided to go somewhere with a bitter root. But Lemony believed the woman probably died before they reached the tunnels. He is not sure about that. That's why he said it was probably the last time she used the tunnel. Lemony believes it was a mistake to leave the sub because there wasab there.

The approach of submarine C prevented the return of captain W and Phil to the submarine Q. The only alternative for them was to climb through one of the secret tunnels. The captain somehow managed to deliver the SB to the crows, managed to inform Kit that the SB was going to the Hotel through the crows, and managed to set up a meeting point with Kit herself. JS, who was someone who should have received SB since he was at VFD Headquarters, decided to personally go to Hotel D, and asked for sugar, to inform that he was already waiting for SB to arrive at the hotel.

So apparently, sending SB the hotel through crows was not the original plan. The point is that messenger crows could only take things to a specific location, the place where they were trained to take things. That's why the route the crows would take was known to Frank and Dewey. They probably received many things from crows, which always went the same way. So Dewey's plan was feasible.

Another thing is that while the Baudelaires believe it was Ernest who had the adhesive paper placed on the window, it makes much more sense to believe that Frank did it. Frank was cooperating with Dewey in deceiving Olaf and the other enemies. The adhesive paper produced the misleading effect that the SB would fall into the laundry funnel. On the other hand, it must have been Ernest who handed the harpoon thrower to Violet. This was because it was the incendiary side that was interested in intercepting the crows before delivery was made. So it makes sense that the Baudelaires inferred in reverse (in Chapter 10 I think, from TPP) which of the brothers had done each thing.

Another detail ... One of the D brothers met the Baudelaires just before the trial. He brought tea and said, "We have no sugar." He was probably saying, "We didn't find the SB." Klaus then said something about the tea being bitter, and from there the man began to treat the Baudelaires rudely. I deduce that this man was Ernest. Until that moment Ernest had been deceived by the Baudelaires. But Klaus's response led him to realize that these brats were undercover volunteers.

[Dante]

That's actually a fairly elegant theory, Jean Lucio, though as I consider the swimming woman in TGG and the woman in the diving suit (and in the taxicab trunk) from TPP to be the same character, I can't contemplate it myself.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

If you remember, I used to think so too. But today I'm more willing to think that the mysterious woman in the cabin is JS. JS was the recipient of the secret message left in the refrigerator. This is an indication that the SB should stop at the hands of JS. If it really was Lemony who threw the SB out of the headquarters window (and the evidence indicates yes) and if indeed Lemony was the mysterious taxi driver (and the evidence indicates yes) Lemony and JS were working together. Lemony's plan was to deliver the SB to JS. Despite the difficulties, I believe the plan worked, with "slight" adjustments. Interestingly, Frank apparently assumed Kit knew who JS was, because in the message Frank sent her, he gave no further details. He just said something like, "JS registered and asked for sugar." Frank just wanted to tell Kit that JS is already here at the hotel waiting for SB to arrive. If Frank and Dewey were working together, (and it seems that they were) and Dewey was working along with Lemony (which seems to be Lemony who hurled SB from headquarters and Dewey said he was working along with the person who did it) so Dewey wanted SB to reach JS's hands, just as Lemony wanted. If Dewey knew that the SB would fall into the pond, (and it seems that he already knew this would happen) then Dewey arranged in advance that somehow after the SB fell into the pond, the SB would be recovered and then taken to the JS's hands, because that was what Lemony wanted and Dewey was working with Lemony. Another detail: SB was not used at all in the hotel. Contrary to my belief that SB's arrival was part of an elaborate plan to kill people at the hotel itself, none of this occurred, and none of it was about to happen. So SB's arrival at the hotel was not part of Dewey's original plan.

[Dante]

Jan 10, 2020 0:28:58 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

If it really was Lemony who threw the SB out of the headquarters window (and the evidence indicates yes) and if indeed Lemony was the mysterious taxi driver (and the evidence indicates yes)

These two statements are logically contradictory. Here's the passage on the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl from the headquarters window:

And none of the Baudelaires would ever meet some of the organization's most beloved volunteers, including the mechanical instructor C. M. Kornbluth, and Dr. Isaac Anwhistle, whom everyone called Ike, and the brave volunteer who tossed the sugar bowl out the kitchen window so it would not be destroyed in the blaze, and watched it float away on one of the tributaries of the Stricken Stream. The Baudelaires would never do any of these things, any more than I will ever see my beloved Beatrice again [...]

-TSS, p. 284

Lemony confidently states that it is impossible for the Baudelaires to meet the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl, but they do meet the taxi driver (who I agree is Lemony); and thus the two cannot be one and the same. Furthermore, I cannot credit that Lemony would describe himself as "brave" or as one of V.F.D.'s "most beloved volunteers".

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Jan 10, 2020 5:09:59 GMT -5 Dante said:

Jan 10, 2020 0:28:58 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

If it really was Lemony who threw the SB out of the headquarters window (and the evidence indicates yes) and if indeed Lemony was the mysterious taxi driver (and the evidence indicates yes)

These two statements are logically contradictory. Here's the passage on the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl from the headquarters window:

And none of the Baudelaires would ever meet some of the organization's most beloved volunteers, including the mechanical instructor C. M. Kornbluth, and Dr. Isaac Anwhistle, whom everyone called Ike, and the brave volunteer who tossed the sugar bowl out the kitchen window so it would not be destroyed in the blaze, and watched it float away on one of the tributaries of the Stricken Stream. The Baudelaires would never do any of these things, any more than I will ever see my beloved Beatrice again [...]

-TSS, p. 284

Lemony confidently states that it is impossible for the Baudelaires to meet the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl, but they do meet the taxi driver (who I agree is Lemony); and thus the two cannot be one and the same. Furthermore, I cannot credit that Lemony would describe himself as "brave" or as one of V.F.D.'s "most beloved volunteers".

I understand, and I fully agree. And thy argument means that you agree with me that TSS has been written after the events recorded in TPP, is not it?

Edit1 - Moreover, I will not argue that Lemony certainly met with Beatrice as indicated in the secret letter in TSS, making this comparison evidently a way of hiding a truth, as indicated by the fact that Lemony did not clearly identify herself as the taxi driver. I won't argue that, I promise.

Edit 2: Note this part (TPP chapter 8):

For years," he said, "while noble people wandered the world observing treachery, my comrade and I have been right here gathering all the information together. We've copied every note from every commonplace book from every volunteer and compiled it all into a catalog. Occasionally, when volunteers have been lost or safe places destroyed, we've had to go ourselves to collect the information that has been left behind. We've retrieved Josephine Anwhistle's files from Lake Lachrymose and carefully copied down their contents. We've pasted together the burnt scraps of Madame Lulu's archival library and taken notes on what we've found. We've searched the childhood home of the man with a beard but no hair, and interviewed the math teacher of the woman with hair but no beard. We've memorized important articles within the stacks of newspaper in Paltryville, and we've thrown important items out of the windows of our destroyed headquarters, so they might wind up somewhere safe at sea.

This seems to indicate that Dewey and someone else were at VFD Headquarters after his destruction by throwing things out the window. Was SB among those things? If SB was, considering what you said, an unidentified person was the one who literally hurled SB out the window. This happened after the headquarters were destroyed and this explains why the paper containing important information about the secret code was not destroyed in the fire. Another detail is that Dewey was there. This means that Dewey himself directly wanted the SB to reach JS's hands, as he participated in drafting the code inside the refrigerator. And this goes back to my argument that Dewey set the whole hotel scene with Frank's help, so that the SB would reach JS's hands. And that's evidence that JS was the mysterious woman in the cab.

[Dante]

Jan 10, 2020 7:16:31 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

Jan 10, 2020 5:09:59 GMT -5 Dante said:

These two statements are logically contradictory. Here's the passage on the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl from the headquarters window:

-TSS, p. 284

Lemony confidently states that it is impossible for the Baudelaires to meet the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl, but they do meet the taxi driver (who I agree is Lemony); and thus the two cannot be one and the same. Furthermore, I cannot credit that Lemony would describe himself as "brave" or as one of V.F.D.'s "most beloved volunteers".

I understand, and I fully agree. And thy argument means that you agree with me that TSS has been written after the events recorded in TPP, is not it?

Not at all; there's no correlation between the statement quoted above and the timing of the series. It simply means that Lemony possessed information which allowed him to confidently assert that it was impossible for the Baudelaires to meet with any of these figures. In the case of Ike Anwhistle, we can state that this is because he was dead; indeed, the extended passage is about the way the Baudelaires would never be able to spend time in the Mortmain Mountains headquarters because of its destruction, which implies that C. M. Kornbluth and the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl out of the window were also known to have died before they had an opportunity of crossing paths with the Baudelaires.

Edit 2: Note this part (TPP chapter 8):

For years," he said, "while noble people wandered the world observing treachery, my comrade and I have been right here gathering all the information together. We've copied every note from every commonplace book from every volunteer and compiled it all into a catalog. Occasionally, when volunteers have been lost or safe places destroyed, we've had to go ourselves to collect the information that has been left behind. We've retrieved Josephine Anwhistle's files from Lake Lachrymose and carefully copied down their contents. We've pasted together the burnt scraps of Madame Lulu's archival library and taken notes on what we've found. We've searched the childhood home of the man with a beard but no hair, and interviewed the math teacher of the woman with hair but no beard. We've memorized important articles within the stacks of newspaper in Paltryville, and we've thrown important items out of the windows of our destroyed headquarters, so they might wind up somewhere safe at sea.

This seems to indicate that Dewey and someone else were at VFD Headquarters after his destruction by throwing things out the window. Was SB among those things? If SB was, considering what you said, an unidentified person was the one who literally hurled SB out the window. This happened after the headquarters were destroyed and this explains why the paper containing important information about the secret code was not destroyed in the fire. Another detail is that Dewey was there. This means that Dewey himself directly wanted the SB to reach JS's hands, as he participated in drafting the code inside the refrigerator. And this goes back to my argument that Dewey set the whole hotel scene with Frank's help, so that the SB would reach JS's hands. And that's evidence that JS was the mysterious woman in the cab.

The error you make is in the fact that the word "headquarters" is both singular and plural. Lemony states that the Baudelaires would not meet the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl from the Mortmain Mountains headquarters window. This makes it impossible that either Kit or Dewey can be the volunteer in question. We know from the U.A. page 37 that V.F.D. has had multiple headquarters, therefore Dewey and Kit must have thrown important items from the windows of prior destroyed headquarters. In fact, on closer examination, your quote from TPP proves this to be the case! The TSS passage I quote refers to the sugar bowl having been tossed from the window "so it would not be destroyed in the blaze", but Dewey, as you point out, refers to throwing items out of the windows of "our destroyed headquarters". In short, the Mortmain Mountains throwing incident took place before destruction, Kit and Dewey's throwing incidents took place after destruction. (In this case, it becomes possible that Kit and/or Dewey visited the Mortmain Mountains headquarters after the fire and threw other important items out of the window, but none of these items can have been the sugar bowl.)

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Why do you think the Dewey's comrade was Kit? She was not bedridden due to pregnancy during most of the events narrated by Dewey?( Or rather after the park fire.)



In addition, it would be possible that Dewey and the comrade of him have gone to the HQ and then left the message in the refrigerator for JS? It still remains the question of how the paper containing important information about SB survived the fire.

I think the reference to items being thrown out the window to a safe place is a clear reference to headquarters in the mountains. And if you stop to think, some important things (besides SB) were inside GG. Including information about secret codes, and letters related to VFD Schism.

In this case, Dewey knew that JS was going to the headquarters, and left a comment for her (or he, but I think it's she). Dewey wanted the SB to fall into JS's hands, and she would receive the information that SB was going to the sea through the water cycle.

[Dante]

Jan 10, 2020 16:51:18 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

Why do you think the Dewey's comrade was Kit? She was not bedridden due to pregnancy during most of the events narrated by Dewey?( Or rather after the park fire.)

Because it's obvious. In any case, if Kit wasn't bedridden by pregnancy at this point, she won't have been before; the one time she previously discloses herself as being bedridden, when she learnt of Jacques's death, is of unclear duration and could have lasted as little as a few seconds (specifically, she stayed in bed until she got hungry).

In addition, it would be possible that Dewey and the comrade of him have gone to the HQ and then left the message in the refrigerator for JS? It still remains the question of how the paper containing important information about SB survived the fire.

I think the reference to items being thrown out the window to a safe place is a clear reference to headquarters in the mountains. And if you stop to think, some important things (besides SB) were inside GG. Including information about secret codes, and letters related to VFD Schism.

In this case, Dewey knew that JS was going to the headquarters, and left a comment for her (or he, but I think it's she). Dewey wanted the SB to fall into JS's hands, and she would receive the information that SB was going to the sea through the water cycle.

You think it's obvious that Dewey was referring to the Valley of Four Drafts headquarters, but refuse to read between the lines regarding the identity of Dewey's comrade? Come now, Jean Lucio. He even confirms (on page 187) that she's female. In any case, Anwhistle Aquatics was also an important V.F.D. establishment and thus is the natural expected source of any V.F.D. items in the grotto of unclear provenance, especially those relating to A.A.'s founder.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

About Kit being the comrade, now that you've explained it seems obvious, in fact ... But that doesn't remove the fact that it's obvious that the reference to the secret base refers to mountain headquarters, does it?

As well as a Dewey Women's Comrade was hypothetically to refer to any other woman but most likely to refers to the k
Kit, a secret base that was burned and who people threw important items by the window and these important items were to stop at a secret place in the ocean can hypothetically refer to another other secret base, but most likely refers to the main HQ on the mountains ... Using this reasoning, Dewey was at the secret base of the mountains after the fire.

I have already confirmed that Lemony was not there. According to Lemony, in Chapter 13 of TSS, he needed search to understand the meaning of poem related to the Secret Code. I am sure that he would not need to do this case he was held the responsible in having left the Secret Code.

And back to the question ... The fact that Dewey was there after the fire may explain the following passage (TSS chapter 11):

Klaus frowned, and lifted the teacup.

"Under a burnt wooden sign marked 'Poetry,' I found a pile of papers that were burned practically beyond recognition," he said, "but here's the one surviving scrap, and it's the last quatrain of the eleventh stanza of 'The Garden of Proserpine,' by Algernon Charles Swinburne."

"That's convenient," Quigley said. "A little too convenient," Klaus said. "The entire library was destroyed, and the one poem that survived is the one we need. It can't be a coincidence." He held out the scrap of paper so Violet and Quigley could see it. "It's as if someone knew we'd be looking for this."

Look ... This time is not the same as the time I created the whistle connection.. This time we have a clear indication that Daniel Handler intensely put an intensional clue in this section. If this piece of paper did not catch fire, it was because it was added to the fire site after the fire. And then we get the indication that Dewey was there, after the fire.

Whoever left the paper with the poem also left the secret message. The one who left the secret message was not the same person who threw the SB out the window. For SB was launched before or during the fires. Whoever left the message wanted JS to know where SB was. So it's likely that Dewey left the message, because Dewey was there after the fire.

[Dante]

Jan 13, 2020 13:10:32 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

About Kit being the comrade, now that you've explained it seems obvious, in fact ... But that doesn't remove the fact that it's obvious that the reference to the secret base refers to mountain headquarters, does it?

As well as a Dewey Women's Comrade was hypothetically to refer to any other woman but most likely to refers to the k
Kit, a secret base that was burned and who people threw important items by the window and these important items were to stop at a secret place in the ocean can hypothetically refer to another other secret base, but most likely refers to the main HQ on the mountains ... Using this reasoning, Dewey was at the secret base of the mountains after the fire.

I knew that that would be your reply. I accept the point; I genuinely don't believe that Handler necessarily meant Dewey to definitely be referring to the Valley of Four Drafts headquarters - but so long as you aren't proposing that he or Kit was also responsible for casting the sugar bowl into the ocean, then I don't have an objection to that answer. (The more one digs into the headquarters fire, the more of a tangle the whole business appears to have been, though.)

Look ... This time is not the same as the time I created the whistle connection.. This time we have a clear indication that Daniel Handler intensely put an intensional clue in this section. If this piece of paper did not catch fire, it was because it was added to the fire site after the fire. And then we get the indication that Dewey was there, after the fire.

Whoever left the paper with the poem also left the secret message. The one who left the secret message was not the same person who threw the SB out the window. For SB was launched before or during the fires. Whoever left the message wanted JS to know where SB was. So it's likely that Dewey left the message, because Dewey was there after the fire.

This is slightly more complicated than you perhaps make it out to be. It seems to me that you are making two assumptions which are in actuality in a position to be challenged: That the message in its completed form existed only after the fire, and that the message referred to the sugar bowl.

First, let's consider the message purely on its own terms. I am in agreement with you that the relevant coded stanza could reasonably be speculated to have been placed after the fire, given that the suspiciousness of its survival is highlighted (TSS p. 242). But let's dial it back a second. The existence of the stanza and the scrap of paper are not in themselves particularly important; they're just making it easy. That particular stanza's role in the message is actually directly and specifically indicated by part of the Verbal Fridge Dialogue - the coded label on the spice-based condiment, the mustard: "'Vinegar, mustard seed, salt, tumeric, the final quatrain of the eleventh stanza of "The Garden of Prosperine," by Algernon Charles Swinburne'" (p. 241). So in actuality, the deployment of this particular stanza was pre-set. Dewey/Kit would have to either know long before arriving exactly what stanza was referred to in the Verbal Fridge Dialogue so they could pre-prepare a scrap of paper - or they would have to pre-prepare both a scrap of paper and the relevant mustard! But the latter would undermine the very premise of Verbal Fridge Dialogue: "The volunteers left a message [...] in the only place they knew wouldn't be affected by the fire." (p. 198) So to me it seems like the clear implication is that the message was not prepared by Kit/Dewey after the fact; the whole thing was already anticipated beforehand, and Dewey/Kit assisted at most by dropping a suitable scrap of paper after the fact.

Secondly, let's look at the relevance of the coded message to the sugar bowl - and it is also true that the stanza has had the words "sugar bowl" pencilled onto it (pp. 244-245). But hold on a second - isn't it suspicious that this is such an unsubtle addition to what's otherwise a very carefully-coded message? Why is this part so hastily and riskily added? It looks a lot like these two words aren't actually part of the original message. In fact, given that, as I highlighted above, the stanza's role in the code hinges on a pre-printed label, it seems evident that this particular aspect of the code is not something that could be hastily prepared - say, in response to the imminent or ongoing destruction of the headquarters, necessitating the tossing out of the window of the sugar bowl. What seems more likely to me is that the addition of the words "sugar bowl" are entirely incidental and perhaps highlight, in fact, a coincidence. What could the message have originally referred to? Let's consult the ending of TSS:

That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

This part is a bit tricker, because some poems are a bit like secret codes, in that you must study them carefully in order to discover their meaning. A poet such as Quigley Quagmire's sister, Isadora, of course, would know at once what those two lines mean, but it took me quite some time before I decoded them. Eventually, however, it became claer that "the weariest river" refers to the Stricken Stream, which indeed seemed weary from carrying away all of the ashes from the destruction of V.F.D. headquarters, and that "winds somewhere safe to sea" refers to the last safe place where all the volunteers, including Quigley Quagmire, could gather.

-p. 336

Is it possible that, in fact, the role of this stanza was simply to indicate that the volunteers' meeting - included in the overal Verbal Fridge Dialogue message by means of the jar of olives! - was to take place at the last safe place? The Baudelaires sort of jump to this conclusion anyway, but it's Klaus's final interpretation of the text: "And we know that the message said to meet on Thursday at the last safe place." (p. 331) We may even take from this that the last safe place is literally positioned near the mouth of the Stricken Stream, and indeed the Hotel Denouement does look over the sea, however much the Baudelaires may have taken a significant detour. Do we have any further evidence of this? Perhaps we do. Consider that, in TSS, Violet deflated one of the tyres on Olaf's car, with the result that the Baudelaires believe they'll "have a head start" (p. 322). But in TGG, we learn that Olaf's following actions were that he "made my way down the mountain" - and then, casually, with no further explanation, "I met my associates at the Hotel Denouement" (TGG pp. 192-193). In fact, Olaf was back at it stalking the ocean in a submarine on the very same day the Baudelaires left him behind! So this is an indication that the Hotel Denouement is indeed a fairly easy journey away from the Mortmain Mountains (however unlikely that may seem).

Where does this leave the sugar bowl? The fact is, that object ended up in a very unsafe place indeed. Perhaps we can attribute this to the fact that it had no human to direct it, to travel and watch out for an important hotel. The scribbled addition of "sugar bowl" may simply have been a hasty addition to indicate that that object was coincidentally taking the same route as a volunteer - for a while. It rather starts to look as if this element of the message must actually have been added in haste by somebody who was in a position to know where the sugar bowl would be for only a short period of time; indeed, it starts to look as if this aspect of the note might have been left by - the volunteer who threw the sugar bowl out of the window. Was the action of any subsequent volunteer visitor to the ruins really nothing more than extracting this piece of paper from the fridge, and dropping it where it would attract less attention?

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I need to acknowledge that this makes perfect sense. So let's coherently reconstruct what must have happened that day. The Headquarters started to be set on fire room by room. Some volunteers, because they had enough time, wrote a secret message to JS. (They probably didn't know who Jacques Snicket was dead.) These volunteers wanted to inform JS that there would be a meeting on Thursday at the Hotel D. Hence, they left headquarters, as there was time to do so calmly, as the fires were going on. Someone then arrived at headquarters, and this person had the SB in hand. This person saw the message on the refrigerator, including the paper containing the poem that was also in the refrigerator. This person realized that those volunteers did not know that Jacques snicket was dead.

This person then smelled smoke and threw the SB out the window.That person wrote Sugar Bowl on the fridge paper and ran away. (This is all possible because the fires at headquarters were gradual)

After that, Dewey and Kit arrived at the destroyed Headquarters for the purpose of retrieving information. They found the secret message on the fridge including the paper containing the poem and also where it was written Sugar Bowl. They deduced that someone had thrown the SB out the window. They finished throwing the important items out the window, placed the poem in a less visible place than in the refrigerator. As Dewey and Kit figured someone had thrown the SB out the window, they contacted Captain W and asked him to look for the SB in the ocean. When Dewey and Kit left, they locked up the door. After that, the Baudelaires and Quigley reached the secret base.
This seems coherent, and of course not all the details were necessarily that way.
This is only a sketch produced by your excellent deductions.

If so, Dewey didn't want the person who was pretending to be JS to stay with SB. In fact, he and Frank must have been surprised when someone wearing the initials JS registered at hotel D and asked for sugar.

But now I had other ideas.
Thinking now, I begin to understand a little better. Kit and Quigley must have decided to send a copy message to JS to try to unmask him. It was a trap. Figuring someone was impersonating Jacques Snicket, Kit and Quigley sent the message as a copy to the telegraph that would be used by Jacques Snicket. In other words, Kit used the Baudelaires as bait. Kit wanted JS himself to intercept the Baudelaires on the beach. But instead, JS sent Mr. Poe. Even without being able to identify who JS was, it was clear to Kit that the message reached someone who was using her brother's initials. So she could tell that someone was actually acting as an impostor.

But back to the SB. The SB was launched through the window. But it did not go to a safe place. The SB went to an unknown location. Hence Klaus calculated where the SB went. Captain W informed someone (or a group of people) about the location of the SB and that the Baudelaires were aboard the submarine. The information reached the woman swimmer. And then we come to the crux of the matter. And I think this crux can be solved by considering that the W family never knew which side of the Schism to support. I believe this Schism was Gregor's Schism, to which Mrs W evidently supported Gregor's side. The mysterious woman must be supportive of Gregor's side, as she wanted to recover the SB before Captain W. It's important to point out that no matter what is inside the SB, what matters is that it's something deadly, of potential similar to the fungus MM.

Lemony claims it was a mistake for AA to be destroyed, which makes me believe Lemony supported George A's ideas, because George A believed that killing the bad guys was a good thing. (Lemony seems to have come to believe this after the ATWQ events). This also explains why Lemony praises the volunteer that threw the SB by the window.This also explains the Lemony's reason for him not to want to identify explicitly to be the taxi driver. The woman swimmer may have convinced Captain W to support the cause of Gregor Schism's supporters. (But I still think more likely she has been contaminated, but I think we will never have a definite answer to that..)



So if Lemony was supporting the swimmer, it is possible that he helped restore the SB from the pond. In this case, the woman in the trunk and Lemony were working together to recover the SB. It is noteworthy that Lemony describes that a taxi driver was looking with binoculars at the laundry funnel. This might mean that this taxi driver was Lemony himself realized that the SB would not fall into the laundry room, but would fall into the pond. So he and the mysterious woman prepared for SB's arrival at the hotel, knowing that SB would fall into the pond. Else asked the mysterious woman to look in the pond, then left with the woman and the SB.

About the swimming woman being the same character of mysterious woman in the taxi, I prefer to believe that they are not the same person. Even in this scenario, it does not seem that no one really wanted the SB to go to the hotel. It seems that it was something unfranted last minute.


Still, it must have been the captain W that I had been the Kit that SB was going to the hotel through the crows. I deduced that the captain regretted to have supported the Greek's faction and decided to support again kit, and so it passed the information to her. JS went to the hotel after knowing that the crows would take the SB to there.

The fact that Kit was informed about SB being taken by ravens to the Hotel seems to indicate that someone took SB from GG and then decided to hand over to JS but that person for some reason could not personally deliver. So this person hastily decided to hand over to the crows. The woman and the captain do not look as though they would split so easily after the captain left the submarine because of him and with her, unless he changed his mind again. And there is the solution that I propose. Captain W's sudden change of heart must have been the cause of this confusion. If someone other than the swimmer had caught the SB, it is unlikely that Kit would receive the information that the SB was coming through the crows. That Kit kept in touch with Captain W is proved by the fact that she would meet him in person at a specific location. Captain W had suddenly changed his mind before, at the time of George's Schism. If the swimmer were the same woman in the cab, she would probably bring the SB with her to the hotel. So I think the mysterious woman in the cab is more likely to be JS, who received the SB, and she was not fooled by Dewey and Frank's strategy. In any case, we are in a very hypothetical area, not in a canonical area, Since these events were not narrated. The mysterious woman could be the same swimming woman if the events occurred in a different way of what I imagined.



Now, opening a parenthesis to defend my personal ideas about Beatrice: Olivia C had stated that if one of the Baudelaires' parents were alive, he or she would be at Headquarters. What if Beatrice was just the volunteer who threw the SB out the window? After all, it was Beatrice who stole Esmé's SB. What if Beatrice saw the opportunity to take on Jacques's identity in order to protect the children and restore the SB? What if Beatrice and Lemony were working together, because SB content was especially important for Snicket and Baudelaires? There are many "what if".

[TheAsh]

Jan 9, 2020 6:27:44 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

Now that I am thinking outside the box I had created to think outside the box, I can think of a simpler explanation of what happened to the swimmer. She went down one of the tunnels. She took the SB and swam to Queequeg. Captain W was glad of her arrival. But then she said something that convinced him to leave the submarine immediately. She said "I can't breathe properly" or something. After all, no one seemed to know that the fungus MM was proliferating in GG, so she didn't take proper precautions. Like Sunny, the mysterious woman must have been contaminated. Since Phil was a bad cook, Phil couldn't think of a replacement for poison diluent. Then the three decided to go somewhere with a bitter root. But Lemony believed the woman probably died before they reached the tunnels. He is not sure about that. That's why he said it was probably the last time she used the tunnel. Lemony believes it was a mistake to leave the sub because there wasab there.

The approach of submarine C prevented the return of captain W and Phil to the submarine Q. The only alternative for them was to climb through one of the secret tunnels. The captain somehow managed to deliver the SB to the crows, managed to inform Kit that the SB was going to the Hotel through the crows, and managed to set up a meeting point with Kit herself. JS, who was someone who should have received SB since he was at VFD Headquarters, decided to personally go to Hotel D, and asked for sugar, to inform that he was already waiting for SB to arrive at the hotel.

So apparently, sending SB the hotel through crows was not the original plan. The point is that messenger crows could only take things to a specific location, the place where they were trained to take things. That's why the route the crows would take was known to Frank and Dewey. They probably received many things from crows, which always went the same way. So Dewey's plan was feasible.

Another thing is that while the Baudelaires believe it was Ernest who had the adhesive paper placed on the window, it makes much more sense to believe that Frank did it. Frank was cooperating with Dewey in deceiving Olaf and the other enemies. The adhesive paper produced the misleading effect that the SB would fall into the laundry funnel. On the other hand, it must have been Ernest who handed the harpoon thrower to Violet. This was because it was the incendiary side that was interested in intercepting the crows before delivery was made. So it makes sense that the Baudelaires inferred in reverse (in Chapter 10 I think, from TPP) which of the brothers had done each thing.

Another detail ... One of the D brothers met the Baudelaires just before the trial. He brought tea and said, "We have no sugar." He was probably saying, "We didn't find the SB." Klaus then said something about the tea being bitter, and from there the man began to treat the Baudelaires rudely. I deduce that this man was Ernest. Until that moment Ernest had been deceived by the Baudelaires. But Klaus's response led him to realize that these brats were undercover volunteers.

Excellent theory. There are two great points about this theory: 1) The Baudelaires have a history of misinterpreting events (see Uncle Monty and Peru for one example, or survivor of the fire being Quigley as another) so it would fit very well into the general way the books work 2)It coherently explains why sugar is a signal. The one thing I want to point out is that the Wasabi was not on the submarine at all - it was fortuitously found by Sunny in the Grotto and brought back by her to the submarine. Thus, the woman made the right choice by trying to find horseradish.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Great! Thanks!! It's true!