Let’s consider the stalls from right to left, from nearer the entrance of the lavatory to furthest away from the entrance of the lavatory.

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Nearest to the entrance of the lavatory is (1) a stall without a door, piled high with sacks filled with who-knows-what, and which has boards nailed across its door frame to block access. I’m going to ignore the mystery presented by this blocked-off lavatory stall in this blog-post.

One stall further away from the entrance of the lavatory is (2) the stall in which we see Diana and Meg together in the E3/pregame video (this is the scene during which Diana deliberately presses Meg’s finger into the thorn of a rose that Meg is offering to Diana, after which Diana sucks on Meg’s wounded finger—provided we believe the illustration on the game box showing Diana sucking on a finger: from the just the E3/pregame video itself we cannot see exactly what Diana is doing… she could could just be kissing the wounded finger).

This (2) is also the same lavatory stall in which Diana and Meg are talking to each other—during the “Bird of Happiness” chapter—while Jennifer is listening from (3) the adjacent stall (one stall further from the entrance).

(3) The adjacent lavatory stall from which Jennifer is listening, during the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, is the stall with the drawing of the red bird.

One stall further from the entrance, is (4) the stall into which Gregory pulls Jennifer during the E3/pregame video.

And there is one more stall (5) that is the furthest from the entrance of the lavatory.

I propose a hypothesis that these lavatory stalls are assigned (by the Aristocrat Club) as follows:
(2) The stall of the Duchess, Diana
(3) The stall of the Countess, Eleanor
(4) The stall of the Baroness, Meg
(5) The stall for all of the other girls

In the gamescript of TheSinnerChrono (see the link in “Important Resources“), we are told that lavatory stall (2) is “their secret place” (that is, the secret place of Diana and Meg). This is just an interpretation given by TheSinnerChrono, the game itself never tells us this explicitly. And as I thought more about this interpretation, I began to wonder if it was wrong in two respects: wrong in saying that the place was secret, and wrong in saying it was “their” (in the plural sense) place.

At first I accepted that the stall was “their” place, but questioned whether it was actually a secret place.

That particular stall is certainly a place for Diana and Meg to tell secrets and do secret things, but having a lavatory stall as a secret place invites unintentional interferences by others wanting to use the stall. Unless—I thought—it is a actually a private place rather than a secret place… a lavatory stall well-known by all the girls to be the exclusive “private property” of Diana and Meg. That made more sense to me.

And notice that in the E3/pregame video, while Diana and Meg are together in the lavatory stall, Eleanor is standing in the middle of the main space of the lavatory room, facing toward the open entrance of the lavatory (connecting to the hallway), as if standing guard over the privacy of Meg and Diana (Jennifer sees the scene only because she is looking through the open lavatory door from the hallway outside of the lavatory). The stall is certainly not a secret from Eleanor. Nor would the fact that something was going on in the stall be a secret if somebody was turned away from using the lavatory by Eleanor. Privacy seems to be the issue here, not secrecy.

In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, it may be that Meg and Diana are wanting to talk about Eleanor behind her back. At any rate, Eleanor is not around to stand guard over their privacy, which could be enough in itself to explain the “shhhhh”s and admonitions to be “quiet” before Meg and Diana enter the stall. Even in their private place, they don’t want “eavesdroppers”, so it is better if they go to their private stall secretly on this occasion.

The idea that this stall (2) was the private property of Meg and Diana opened up the possibility that the adjacent stall (3) was the private property of Eleanor, which might shed light on the presence of the red bird drawing in that stall. I liked this idea, but as I thought more about it, I began to think that the idea that Meg and Diana shared a stall, while Eleanor had one to herself, was an odd arrangement.

It then occurred to me that it seemed far more appropriate that each of the three aristocrats would have had their own private lavatory stalls, and that these stalls would be arranged according to rank.

TheSinnerChrono identifies Diana as being the one who says “Over here!” to Meg, before they enter the stall (2) in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter. I agree. And we see that it is Diana that leads the way to the stall. If the stall was Diana’s private place, it would be expected that Meg would only enter by Diana’s invitation.

Both times that we see Meg and Diana together in that stall, we see Diana as the one who sits on the toilet, which is sometimes humorously called “the throne” in English. Diana on the throne, while Meg stands or kneels, is what we would expect anyway from Diana’s superior rank and relational dominance, but it is also consistent with the idea that Diana is the master of that particular place.

And if my hypothesis about private stalls, and their assignment, is correct, then the lavatory stall with the red bird drawing is indeed Eleanor’s private lavatory stall. Perhaps we can use this as a clue to help us come to an understanding of the meaning of the red bird drawing in that stall.

What do you think of the hypothesis of assigned lavatory stalls?

Along the way, Jennifer can encounter Eleanor searching for the red bird. See my previous blog post: Eleanor in the Sector 9 Turbine Area During the “Bird of Happiness” .

Brown eventually comes to a halt shortly after entering the 3rd Passenger Corridor, where a trail of fallen, and falling, red feathers begins.

Is it a coincidence that the place in the corridor where Brown halts and barks is in the vicinity of the door to the Women’s Lavatory, and the end of the trail of feathers will also be a Women’s Lavatory?

The trail of feathers is made up of feathers too large to belong to the red bird, and there are far too many on the floor, and falling from above, to belong to any single bird.

What does it mean that the feathers are continuously falling from above? The impression I get is that it means that whatever happened to the red bird was very recent… the feathers haven’t even had sufficient time to have all hit the floor yet.

Jennifer can follow these feathers up the stairs, through the one-leaf clover door, into the 2nd passenger corridor, and to the door of a Women’s Lavatory.

Once inside the Women’s Lavatory the trail of feathers is much different. More realistic.

The feathers are now small enough to have come from the red bird. And there are only just a few feathers, not so many feathers that they couldn’t have come from a single bird. And there are some dark red drops along the path that look like blood that has dripped down to the floor.

I get the impression from this scene that the previous trail of over-sized and over-many feathers was a dream exaggeration of this trail that we see now, this trail of feathers being the truer and more realistic memory upon which the dream-exaggerated trail was built. (Yes, I know that we will learn in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that the red bird was a doll and not a living bird… nonetheless, the impression given by this scene—in my opinion—is that we have transitioned from a fantasy exaggeration of a memory to a true—or truer—memory).

The impression that we have undergone a transition from a fantasy world to a true, or truer, memory is not just a matter of the transformation of the exaggerated feather trail into a more realistic form, but also a matter of our seeming to have undergone a nearly full transition back to the orphanage itself.

The Women’s Lavatory in which Jennifer now stands is nearly identical to the Women’s Lavatory that we can find near the Reception Room of the orphanage. The only difference between the two lavatories that I can see is that there is no window in this lavatory (unlike that of the one in the orphanage).

When Jennifer opens the stall door that the feather, and blood, trail leads to, she sees what looks like a splatter of blood on the wall. This splatter of blood has some feathers stuck to it. Blood has dripped down from the splatter mark. Below the blood splatter is another drawing of the red bird (which resembles, in style of drawing, the drawings that were seen along the corridors before Jennifer and Brown encountered the exaggerated feather trail).

The red bird drawing has outstretched wings, one wing seems to be holding a fork and the other wing seems to be holding a knife. The beak of the red bird is turned upward and is wide open. The dripped blood from the blood splatter has dripped down the wall as if into the open beak of the bird. Combined with the effect given by the knife and fork, it seems as if the bird wants to eat whatever it was that splattered on the wall. But this is especially odd if it is the red bird itself that is supposed to have been splattered on the wall (as the feathers stuck to the blood splatter seem to indicate).

This drawing is also found in the Women’s Lavatory of the orphanage (near the Reception Room). But in the orphanage, the blood splatter does not look real as it does in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter. It seems to be just a rather unrealistic drawing of a blood splatter, not the real thing. And the blood does not drip down to the open beak of the red bird drawing.

When Jennifer opens the stall door in the Women’s Lavatory of the airship, she says: “Is that blood on it…?”

Then Diana and Meg arrive.

(To be continued in “Part 2″)

I have mentioned before that the airship salon is a transformation of the orphanage reception room.  See my blog-post See-all Walkthrough, With Commentary: “The Little Princess” Chapter (Part 17): The Airship Salon is the Reception Room Transformed for an account of the correspondences that can be seen.

The salon has two tables that have been flipped onto their sides and moved away from the center of the room. There are small red objects scattered on the rug and the couch. Are these red feathers, or the petals of red roses? The flower vase that would normally hold red roses is lying on the rug, tipped on its side among the red objects. This seems to support the idea that the red objects are rose petals. However, Eleanor’s red bird is in the salon, which could support the idea that the red objects are red feathers.

It seems problematical to attribute the mess in the salon as being due to the affect of air turbulence on the airship. The china looks undisturbed on the narrow ledge of the china cabinet. Why did none fall and break? And why have none of the free standing picture frames, on the table to the right of the china cabinet, tipped over?

Go to Eleanor and press “x” several times while Jennifer stands next to her. You will get the following text:

The cold Princess said, “The thief will be punished.”

Eleanor just stands near the grandfather clock and the hat/coat rack, facing the area between them, holding an empty bird cage with her right hand.

If Jennifer moves to the clock, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the rack. If Jennifer moves to the rack, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the clock.

Alternatively, instead of running to the rack from the grandfather clock, Jennifer can run away in the opposite direction from the rack. Now, If Jennifer moves to the clock, Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the rack. If Jennifer moves away from the clock (in the opposite direction from the rack), Eleanor’s red bird will fly to the clock.

But you can mess with these patterns because Jennifer can move faster than the bird can respond. By outrunning the bird’s flight pattern I’ve achieved making the bird seem to chase Jennifer: First Jennifer moves to the clock, then the bird flies to the clock; next, Jennifer moves to the rack, and then the bird flies to the rack.

What does it mean that Eleanor’s red bird is alive in the “Rag Princess Sews” (October 1930) chapter, when it apparently died in the “Bird of Happiness” (July 1930) chapter? As you ponder that question, don’t forget that, in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter, Jennifer speaks of: “The red bird in the cage… The doll Eleanor treasured.” So Eleanor’s red bird was never actually alive in reality.

Before leaving the salon, have Jennifer stand near the free-standing lamp by the door. Pressing “x” will cause the lampshade to move.