Saint James Infirmary #874: “Possessory Interest”

Firstly, I like the apparent "seduction" of Erin that Zenon appears to be attempting. Whether it's actually having any effect is a different matter. But we've just had a similar attempt where she was faking so hopefully something more effective is happening this time.

I also wonder if "I loved Adrian. Before... anything" is just keeping the speech bubble a manageable size or if it's a hint that there's more to Adrian and Erin than we know about. I tried to find a similar shorthand for this comment but... nothing.

It's also nice to see 25 re-rendered in the latest art style. Quite a difference.

I think Jakob is talking about Rain in 449. It appears that Rain's father is Atlas (236). Jakob has more than once used company names containing the word Titanomachy (368). We saw Rain call on her father to look down and locate the missing women in 496. So my theory is that Jakob is addressing the sky with the expectation that Atlas is currently up there looking down on him, guiding the attackers.

The placement of 449 gives the impression that Jakob is having to flee his bolthole in Geneva because people are on to him now that he's known to be alive. But I'd have thought that Rain would already have known who Dani was and thus that Jakob was alive. So I'd have thought that he would have been having to flee like this regularly. On the other hand, if Rain did know he was alive then why didn't she simply tell Adrian and his gang? And if she didn't then how and why did Adrian end up with a harem full of super-skilled women? So maybe my reading of 449 is wrong...

In any case, 236 surely represents Jakob letting Rain know that he's alive, so if she didn't know before, she did then.

We know that Jakob faked his death in a plane crash "early last year" (326). We know that Dani was his personal pilot and her being alive was enough to confirm to everyone that Jakob is alive too (313). That's because she was known (or supposed) to have been in the plane with him. Her name was omitted from the official report into his disappearance to avoid a scandal; Johannes let her father know privately that she had been killed (g24).

We don't know how the faked plane crash was worked. We can't know for sure that Dani was actually with Jakob up to the point of his disappearance. But if she was then she can only have been (back) in Kearsarge since "early last year" at the earliest. And since it's currently January in the story, that means she's been back for a year at the most.

But it's most likely that there never was an actual crash. Therefore Jakob never actually lost control of Dani. Given the time window (we know from g3 that Dani was living in the SJI by August), it seems very likely that Jakob sent her quite deliberately to Kearsarge.

Dani didn't remember any of this at the start of the story. My reading is that although she had an interest in planes, she didn't even know that she was a pilot (162-165). I get the impression that although she had the watch, she didn't actually remember anything about that either. So it seems that Jakob sent her to Kearsarge with a block in her memory.

To this extent I think we knew already that Dani was a "sleeper agent" waiting to be activated. Her activation is key to the story. But the whole story we've seen is not what was planned to happen. Or at least, we don't think it was.

Again, 236 suggests that Jakob was making his presence felt. Perhaps his plan for Dani was timed to occur at around the time that Dani was activated. But it's hard for us to tell what his plan was because it didn't happen.

According to Cherry Dani was sent to Kearsarge by Jakob to recruit Erin but Jakob "set it up all wrong" (275). She could have been lying though.

But if Erin was Jakob's target then, well, what we do know is that Adrian ended up with a harem containing both Dani and Erin. And Erin was the first woman Dani recruited, though that could simply have been down to circumstance.

Derek was intended by someone to activate Dani but Adrian got there first. Well, actually it appears that Derek did activate Dani: he whispered the trigger in her ear but Adrian walked off with her (21). The point though is that Zenon planted that trigger.

We know that there was a plan involving Zenon, Claudia, and Derek (114). Adrian and at least some of the wider harem know that Zenon was in touch with Claudia (368). As it happens, Erin was upstairs when that conversation took place, possibly under the influence of the pendant in Dani's possession. So we don't know if she knows that. And we don't know if any of them has realised that Derek was part of that plan, although they do know that he was using Zenon's trigger (97).

Regardless, if Derek using Zenon's trigger to activate Dani was part of Jakob's plan then surely Zenon implanting the trigger was part of that plan too. So, yes, either Zenon is relying on Erin not knowing that Derek was part of his plan, or he's effectively revealing that his plan was part of Jakob's plan. For the latter to be true, it would seem that he would have to have been double-crossing Claudia because, even alone, with no one to lie to, she was hoping that Jakob was dead (166).

The possibility exists however that Zenon too opposed Jakob, but has come to realise via Cherry that he and Claudia were unwittingly doing Jakob's work. We have no idea how Zenon and Claudia came to know each other. And it appears from 345 that Derek is as likely to obey Julian as Claudia. So an external party could have instigated the Claudia-Zenon-Derek plan.

Significantly, Claudia was being watched (401). The pendant was stolen from Zenon (247) - it's not clear if that was before or after Claudia told Zenon that she and Derek had identified Dani as the woman with the watch. It's likely that it was before Zenon could do anything about it though. Zenon promptly disappeared.

Julian appeared to have Zenon's pendant shortly after the break-in (318). It would seem therefore that he stopped the Claudia-Zenon-Derek plan. Claudia certainly saw Julian and Cherry as her foes (375). However, when Julian was there with her she happily volunteered the information that Adrian had the watch (403). And while it seems that Julian really does talk to Jakob on the phone (448), he was happy to discuss murdering him with Claudia (409).

This comment is getting way too long. In summary: yes it's odd that Zenon mentions Derek in this way, and yes it's entirely possible that this isn't Zenon (I think I said as much when he first made himself known). I am really hoping that Erin is being canoodled into a trap here. It's possible however that she has known everything that Cherry knows since 847.

I think that trying to unravel this comes down to fathoming the motives of Cherry and Julian. In particular I'd like to understand how come three different people were there to meet Johannes at the airport (345).

One further possibility is that Jakob did not fake his own death so much as secretly survive a murder attempt.