“Gary Dorian,” I said. “That portrait was one of the auction’s most distinguished items.”
“I already know you read the article about the festival,” Moxie said with a smile, opening her typewriter case again, “but there was an article about the theft in the next day’s edition.” She produced another envelope, and the envelope produced another scrap of newsprint. “The painting disappeared during the sled race but was found late that night in the home of Chase B. Willow.”
“Who’s Chase B. Willow?”
“He worked for Ink Inc. as a needle operator in the inkwells, needling ink out of the octopi.”
I shivered a little. The giant needle machines extracting ink from the frightened octopi hiding down in deep wells were something that always made me uneasy, from the first time I saw the devices on my way into town. “Why would a needle operator steal a painting?”
“Mr. Willow always maintained his innocence,” Moxie said, using a phrase which here means “said he didn’t do it,” and she looked down at the second article. “ ‘I’m a happily married man,’ Mr. Willow told reporters as police led him out of his house. ‘I have absolutely no interest in cosmeticians.’ Despite these protests, Mr. Willow was arrested and charged with the theft of the painting, which the officers found in Mr. and Mrs. Willow’s attic in what was described as ‘more or less plain sight, leaning against an antique headboard.’ ”
“Were the officers the Mitchums?” I asked, thinking of Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only police officers. “I’m surprised they found the painting. Frankly, I’m surprised they found the attic.”
“It wasn’t the Mitchums,” Moxie said. “It says here it was the Officers Durham. Stain’d-by-the-Sea had a whole police squad back then.”
“So the Durhams arrested Mr. Willow?”
“They did more than arrest him,” Moxie said. “They arrested him and put him on trial, and when he was found guilty, they shipped him off to prison in the city. He’s still there.”
“A prison term seems fair punishment for someone who stole a valuable painting.”
“I agree,” Moxie said, “but I don’t think Mr. Willow committed the crime.”
“Were the Durhams corrupt?”
“The Durhams were two of the bravest and most honest women in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. If they arrested Mr. Willow, they thought he was guilty.”
“He must have looked pretty guilty if the painting was found in his attic,” I said, “and his excuse about being married doesn’t make much sense.”
“His alibi doesn’t make much sense either,” Moxie said.
“Where did Mr. Willow say he was while the painting was stolen?” I asked.
“The whole town knew where he was,” Moxie said. “He was winning a medal and a very handsome fountain pen. Chase B. Willow won the sled race at the Ethan Frome Festival that year. The police deduced that he stole the painting, sledded down the hill with it, and hid it in his attic. That night he had a party celebrating his victory, and invited several of his friends in the police force. During a game of hide-and-seek, they found the painting in the attic.”
“What kind of thief,” I asked, “invites police officers to his home where he has hidden a stolen item?”
“And what kind of thief,” Moxie asked, “tries to win a sledding contest in the middle of a crime?”
“It would be difficult enough to hide a stolen painting on a sled going downhill,” I agreed, “without everyone watching you win a medal and a fountain pen.”
“Nevertheless, Mr. Willow was found guilty and sent to prison,” Moxie said. “The portrait of Gary Dorian was auctioned off the following year, the festival continued to decline, and Willow’s wife divorced her imprisoned husband and moved in with a lawn mower technician. The whole story was more or less forgotten until I stumbled upon it in the archives.”
“What else about the crime is in those archives?” I asked.
“I’m putting together a file,” Moxie said, “but it’s taking a while. The Lighthouse archives are really in a shambles. There are articles and photographs everywhere.”
“Photographs?” I said.
“Of course,” Moxie said. “When you see a picture in a newspaper, it’s just one of dozens the photographer has taken that day. The editors print their favorite one, and the rest are filed away.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“To the archives?”
“To the archives,” I told her, and to the archives we went.
The archives of The Stain’d Lighthouse lived in a lighthouse that had once served as the newspaper office and a beacon for ships at sea and now just served as the Mallahan home. It was a bit of a walk from where Moxie had found me, and the journalist and I wound our way through the deserted streets of Stain’d-by-the-Sea and then up a curvy road that led to the lighthouse. We passed rows of uninhabited houses with broken windows and overgrown lawns, and I found myself wondering how much work a lawn mower technician would have in a town like Stain’d-by-the-Sea, which seemed to grow wilder and more untamed each day.
“You know where the archives are,” Moxie said, gesturing to the spiral staircase as we stepped inside the lighthouse. “I’ll meet you up there after I pour us some limeade and check on my father.”
“Give him my regards,” I said.
“I will if he’s awake,” she said, and ducked into the kitchen while I climbed up the stairs. I had visited the archives of The Stain’d Lighthouse before, and it was always a tiresome task. There were files and stacks of paper everyplace, sometimes very organized and sometimes not at all. If you opened the windows, the breeze tended to blow papers around and make your job worse, but if you kept them closed, the room was so stuffy you wanted to take a nap. I probably needed a nap but didn’t want to take one, like almost everyone I knew.
There was a large, flat desk where Moxie had been working, and I sat there and looked through the papers she had assembled, until I found a sheaf of photographs taken during the Ethan Frome Festival three years previously. By the time Moxie came in with the limeade in tall, frosted glasses, I was frowning at a photo of a large, smiling man with a medal around his neck. He had a sled under one arm and was using his other hand to raise a fountain pen high up in the air in a victory salute. Around him was a crowd frozen in mid-applause, their breaths cloudy in the winter air.
“I’m guessing this is Mr. Willow,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, leafing through the photographs. “Here’s another picture of him right before the race, with his wife holding his sled while he takes a sip of hot cider.”
“I don’t see his wife in the victory crowd,” I said.
“Maybe she was preparing for the party. Look, here’s another photograph of Mr. Willow, although you can only see his back.”
“Then we can’t be sure it’s him,” I said.
“It’s the same sweater,” Moxie said, “and his sledding number is pinned to it there, see? Number Four. It’s printed on the sled, too.”
“There’s no number on the sled when his wife’s holding it.”
“It’s right there, in the victory photo. See?”
I turned my eyes from Chase B. Willow taking a sip of cider to look again at Chase B. Willow winning the pen. He didn’t look much like a criminal, but plenty of people grin after doing terrible things.
“Was the painting in a frame?” I asked.
“It was leaning against a headboard,” Moxie reminded me. “So it was probably framed.”
“I guess he could hide a framed painting under his sweater,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem likely. His shoulders would look square.”
Moxie had found another picture, this one of a chalkboard someone had carried to the top of Homily Hill. The numbers one through fifty were chalked on it, but only twelve numbers had names after them. “Twelve sledders,” she said, “and twelve sledders only. See for yourself.”
I saw for myself:
Mrs. Williams
Dr. Carlos
/> Mr. Williams
Mr. Willow
Mrs. Summerover
Dr. River
Mr. Noleaf
Dr. Bitten
Mr. Crimson
Mrs. Cling
Mr. Paler
Mr. Loth
“Two people named Williams,” I said.
“Yes, a married couple,” Moxie said. “You’ve met them, Snicket. They work over at the distillery.”
“I wonder if they found it difficult to compete against each other,” I said.
“I wouldn’t think so. They competed in the contest for years, when Mrs. Williams was still Miss Herman.”
“Are there any other married couples on the list?”
“Dr. Carlos is married to Mr. Loth,” Moxie said. “She kept her maiden name when she married him.”
“Did Willow’s wife do that?”
“I don’t think so. My mother referred to her as Mrs. Willow in the article.”
“Do you know what she did for a living? Was she a doctor?”
“She was a locksmith,” Moxie said with a frown. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has to do with getting an innocent man out of jail,” I said. “The portrait of Gary Dorian may have been framed, but Chase B. Willow definitely was.”
The conclusion to “Twelve or Thirteen” is filed under “Chalked Name,” here.
MIDNIGHT DEMON.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Snicket,” said the old woman who answered the door. I need hardly describe her. I had been summoned, in a handwritten note on frilly stationery, to come to a rocking chair store, the only one in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. The place was called Cozy’s, and in the window were three cozy rocking chairs gathered together in a cozy circle along with a cozy, furry dog asleep in a cozy basket, and the old woman who ran the place looked exactly like the sort of old woman who would ask you in a handwritten note on frilly stationery to come to her rocking chair store called Cozy’s because she had something on her mind that worried her very much. If you’re still having trouble picturing her, it might help to know that her name was Thomasina Cozy.
“Of course, Mrs. Cozy,” I said. “This is a very lovely shop you have here.”
She ushered me in and gestured around her at all the rocking chairs. “I’m afraid it’s a shadow of its former self,” she said, using a phrase which here means “not as good as it used to be.” “In Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s glory days, our rocking chairs were the prized possession of anyone who liked to sit. Nowadays we have hardly any customers, and those who wander in seem to prefer stationary chairs.”
The old woman said “stationary chairs” as if it were the name of her worst enemy, and offered me a rocking chair to sit in. I took a seat and moved back and forth without wanting to. I preferred stationary chairs myself. I like chairs and I don’t mind rocking, but when the two are combined it’s seasickness to me. “Sometimes I think we should sell something else,” Mrs. Cozy said, “but what else could be sold at a store called Cozy’s?”
“Blankets,” said a voice from the back of the shop. It sounded like a young man.
“Pillows.” The second voice sounded the same age, but female, and soon the voices were bouncing words back and forth, like a tennis match but much cozier.
“Pajamas.”
“Teapots.”
“Candles.”
“Bubble bath.”
“Photographs of kittens.”
“Soft lighting.”
“Loveseats.”
“Sofas.”
“Ottomans.”
“Stationary chairs.”
At this Mrs. Cozy clapped her hands and cried “Enough, twins!” and the owners of the voices stepped forward from behind a particularly tall rocking chair.
“These are the twins,” the old woman said to me, and sure enough, the young man and the young woman looked quite a bit alike. The woman’s hair was long and bushy, and the man’s short and trim, but they had the same facial features, heights, and eyeglasses, and their hands felt identical as they shook mine and gave me their names.
“Tatiana,” said the young woman.
“Treacle,” said the young man.
“The twins are all I have since their father died in a stationary chair accident,” Mrs. Cozy said.
“Our father died choking on a fish bone,” Tatiana explained to me. “He just happened to be sitting at the time.”
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” I said.
Mrs. Cozy shook her head and made a noise I’ve never liked. “Tut tut” is what it was, and she rocked indignantly in her own chair. “Stationary chairs are the devil’s handiwork. If human beings were meant to sit without moving back and forth, we wouldn’t have leg muscles or wind.”
“Mother,” Treacle said patiently, “some people like stationary chairs. If we made a few changes to Cozy’s, we could run a successful business, even in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and we wouldn’t have to live in that cramped apartment above the store.”
“Tut tut,” tutted Mrs. Cozy again. “I’ve taken care of that. Once Tatiana marries Baron von Pendle, all our problems will be solved.”
“She doesn’t want to marry him,” Treacle said.
“He’s a nice enough man,” Tatiana said, “but we don’t have much in common.”
“You don’t need much in common to have a successful marriage,” Mrs. Cozy said. “All your father and I had in common was that we both liked scary movies and eating big-boned fish. Baron von Pendle is a very wealthy man. His uncle invented the swing set, and when the two moving-seat families join together, I can go to my grave without worrying that you twins will end up living on the streets.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Treacle said. “My sister and I are hard workers with a good education and sound business sense.”
Tatiana nodded in agreement. “It’s unlikely we’ll end up living on the streets.”
Mrs. Cozy turned to me. “Children think they know everything, don’t you agree, Mr. Snicket?”
“Mother,” Tatiana said, “Mr. Snicket is a child.”
The shop owner squinted at me, and I wondered if she needed glasses, like her children. She didn’t have them. “I hadn’t heard you were a child,” she said. “I’d heard you’d untangled a lot of problems in our little town, which is why I wrote to you.”
My time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea had felt very entangling, rather than untangling, which simply means that I got into more trouble than I got out of, but there was something about the Cozy family that made me want to help them. Maybe it was the dog, still asleep in the window. People who owned a dog like this dog were likely to be kind people at heart. It was of a type so shaggy that you couldn’t tell where its head was. Except for the dog’s steady breathing, it looked more like a basket of hair than a pet. “I’m happy to be of service,” I said.
Mrs. Cozy smiled and rocked steadily. “The marriage I’ve arranged for my daughter,” she said, gesturing to Tatiana, “is being ruined by a demon.”
I blinked at her and she rocked back at me. It’s an important skill to know when not to say anything. It’s not a skill that came naturally to me then, nor does it come naturally now, nor do I expect it to come naturally to me until I am dead, when I will be very, very good at it.
“I suppose you don’t believe in demons,” Mrs. Cozy said.
“I’ve never seen one,” I said, “although I had a bad pediatrician for a few years.”
“Baron von Pendle,” Mrs. Cozy said, “has reported seeing my daughter walk along the Gobi Pier, which he can see from his front porch.”
“That doesn’t sound like a demon,” I said.
“He sees her at midnight,” she said. “Baron von Pendle has trouble sleeping, and so he often spends the night on his porch swing. He’s spotted her for nine nights in a row. It has disturbed him greatly, and he told me he is reconsidering the marriage.”
Mrs. Cozy gave me a meaningful look, but you should only give someone a meaningful look if
they know what you are being meaningful about, and I had no idea. Walking on the Gobi Pier didn’t seem like a good reason to reconsider marrying someone. I wasn’t planning on marrying anytime soon, but I always assumed that my spouse would occasionally take walks. Mrs. Cozy must have sensed my confusion, because she stopped rocking, just for a moment, to explain to me what she meant. “There are words for a woman who walks the streets late at night,” she said, with another meaningful look. “Words like insomniac.”
“Insomniac?”
“It means someone who has trouble sleeping,” Tatiana explained.
“I know what it means,” I said, “but why should that bother the Baron?”
“Because he’s an insomniac himself,” Mrs. Cozy replied. “You can’t have two insomniacs in the same household. Who will make the oatmeal? But that’s not the point, Mr. Snicket. I tell you my daughter sleeps soundly. I know the Baron would never marry a sleepless woman, so I check each night before I go to sleep at nine fifteen, to make sure she is safe in bed. Yet somehow the Baron sees her roaming the pier at midnight. Something is taking the form of my daughter, to cancel the wedding and ruin my life. A demon is the only reasonable explanation.”
Whether or not you believe in them, demons are not the only reasonable explanation for anything. By all accounts, demons are not reasonable at all. In fact, in some circumstances “reasonable” is a word which means “not a demon.”
“Can you help us, Mr. Snicket?” Mrs. Cozy asked.
“I believe I can,” I said, “but not until this evening. I’ll come back about eleven o’clock.”
“Return here?” Tatiana said. “But the demon is seen along the Gobi Pier, near the Baron’s house.”
I rose from my rocking chair, just when I couldn’t stand it any longer. “You and I,” I told Tatiana, “will walk there together.”
“Tut tut,” Mrs. Cozy said.
“We’ll stay out of the Baron’s sight,” I promised. “It’s the only way to untangle this mess.”
Mrs. Cozy frowned. “If you say so,” she said.
“I say so,” I said, and then I said so long. Just as I need hardly describe what Thomasina Cozy looked like, I probably don’t have to tell you that I suspected Tatiana of sneaking out at night and walking along the pier herself. She didn’t want to marry Baron von Pendle and probably thought this was the best way to cancel the wedding. But there are books all about how wrong I am. I spent the evening writing up a report of a case that doesn’t concern you, and snuck out of the Lost Arms while my wild-haired chaperone slept. I hoped she was dreaming of buying a comb and that someday her dreams would come true.