The night was chilly and misty, what Mrs. Cozy probably thought of as demon weather from all the scary movies she’d seen with her husband. I buttoned my coat and reminded myself always to be careful when eating fish.
Mrs. Cozy greeted me at the door in the sort of nightgown you would expect. Treacle was in some bright red pajamas, sitting in one of the rocking chairs in the window, reading a book and scratching either the head or the tail of the dog. Tatiana had on a long, dark coat and had her hair tucked neatly into a woolen cap. With her hair out of sight, she looked even more like her brother, although Treacle was not wearing lip gloss.
“Shall we?” she said.
“We shall,” I replied, and Mrs. Cozy told me to be careful and that she would be up all night worrying and that she was going to bed. Tatiana and I walked down the cold and empty streets toward the area of town that once had piers at the edge of the sea. Now the sea was gone, drained away by Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s ink industry, and the piers were just like long wooden fingers stretching toward nothing. It is a strange feeling to be walking around at night with a woman you hardly know, particularly if she is scheming against her mother. I didn’t know what to say to her.
“It’s cold this evening” is what I chose.
“It’s all right, Mr. Snicket,” she said. “You don’t have to make small talk.”
“Then let’s talk about something important,” I said. “Let’s talk about your plan to trick your way out of marriage.”
Tatiana frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you know what I mean,” I said. “You’ve been sneaking out at night and prowling along the Gobi Pier, in hopes that Baron von Pendle will cancel your wedding. Your romantic life is none of my affair, but I don’t think it’s right that you’re tricking your mother.”
“I’m not tricking her,” Tatiana insisted. “I’m safe in bed every night, as my mother says.”
“So you say,” I said, “but we’ll see what we’ll see with you right where I can see you.”
We’d reached the piers now, and in the darkness it looked like the sea might still be there, black and quiet in the night. I looked around me and spotted several houses with porches, although they were not close enough for me to see if they had swings, or sleepless barons. I motioned to Tatiana and we stood behind a deteriorating fishing shack.
“I don’t see any demons,” I said. “I wonder if that’s because you’re here with me?”
Tatiana sighed and took off her cap. “I don’t know what the Baron has been seeing on the pier, but it’s not me.”
“Maybe the Baron is making the whole thing up.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he’s happy living as a bachelor, swinging on his porch.”
“I don’t think so. He seems quite eager to be my husband.”
“Much more eager than you are.”
“You’re right that I don’t want to marry him, but I was hoping to convince my mother to let my brother and me—”
Here the shopkeeper’s daughter gasped and pointed a shaky finger at one of the empty piers. It wasn’t empty now. There was a tall, slender figure, just out of the circle of dim light cast by a streetlamp. There were two circles where its face might have been—reflections of the streetlight in a pair of eyeglasses. It looked like it was wearing a long, black coat, or perhaps that was just more darkness, in a town with too much of it.
“That could be anyone,” I said. “A boating enthusiast, for example.”
The figure stepped closer to the streetlamp’s dim glow.
“Anyone,” I said, “with long hair like yours.”
The figure took one step closer and turned its head slowly.
Tatiana screamed and ran away from the piers, her footsteps clattering on the cobblestones. I hurried after her as she gave out another cry, this one of pain, and I saw her crumple to the ground. I might have made a sound myself. Plenty of people make sounds when they are frightened. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and I don’t have to describe the high-pitched wail of a sound I made if I don’t want to.
When I reached Tatiana, she was in something of a heap and breathing heavily. I looked back at the pier to see if there was cause for any more screaming from either of us. The figure was gone.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I just tripped on my own panicked feet. How about you? I thought I heard you cry out.”
“I think that was a nightingale,” I said, helping us up.
“What was that we saw?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“It looked like me,” Tatiana said, looking at the empty pier. “It looked exactly like me. Do you really think it could be some kind of demon?”
“I don’t know anything about demons,” I said. “I don’t know why a demon would want to look like the daughter of the owner of a rocking chair store, or why it would hang around on a pier that isn’t a pier anymore. But I do know you have a twin brother with very similar facial features.”
“He doesn’t have long hair like mine,” Tatiana said, “and he’s at home reading.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” I said. “We can’t see him from here.”
“Well, let’s go home,” Tatiana said. “I can wash the muck off my coat and make us some tea.”
It was a quick if spooky walk back, and tea was already waiting for us at Cozy’s. Treacle was there, in his red pajamas, with a steaming pot next to him on his rocking chair.
“I hope your demon hunt went better than my reading,” he said. “This book was just spoiled by the arrival of Santa Claus.”
“We also saw a mysterious nighttime figure,” Tatiana said.
Treacle raised his eyebrows. “Oh?” he asked.
“Oh,” I said, and knelt down on the ground. “What’s your dog’s name, by the way? I meant to ask you. Such a handsome specimen.”
“We call her Tabby,” said Treacle, “but her proper name is Tabitha.”
“Come here, Tabitha,” I said. “Come here, girl. Here, Tabitha. Here, dog.”
The lump of fur looked around, and as she approached me, I finally saw which end was which. But it wasn’t the only thing I saw. The twins gasped, but then looked at each other and then at me, with matching rueful smiles.
“You’re very good liars,” I said. “That might come in handy if you really want to sell people photographs of kittens. But wouldn’t it be easier just to tell your mother and the Baron that you don’t want to get married?”
“Easier,” Treacle said, “but not as much fun. Did you suspect?”
“Of course he suspected,” Tatiana said, “but he didn’t know for sure until you told him the name of the dog.”
The conclusion to “Midnight Demon” is filed under “Panicked Feet,” here.
THREE SUSPECTS.
Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only library, for as long as it lasted, was housed in the same building that held Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only police station. Whenever you went to one place, you had to look at the other. When I left the library I always saw the station door, and it never looked glad to see me. Literature and the law don’t always get along. A great number of authors have been locked in prison for certain pieces of writing, and just as many police officers have been reduced to tears when reading a particularly powerful book. In Stain’d-by-the-Sea the only remaining police officers were a married couple known to most as the Officers Mitchum and known to me as no help at all. During all my investigations in this fading and endangered town, Harvey and Mimi Mitchum had been like a roller skate someone leaves in your way, so whenever I left the library I couldn’t help glaring at the police station door as if it had sent me tumbling. This particular afternoon the door opened while I was glaring at it, and I found myself glaring at Harvey Mitchum, was who glaring right back at me.
“What do you want?” he asked me right away.
“Justice served and a root beer float,” I said, “but I think I’ll look else
where.”
“I thought you were my son,” Harvey said.
“That’s very touching,” I lied.
Harvey peeked over my shoulder. “I mean he was supposed to come help us.”
“Is that the Snicket kid?” asked the voice of Mimi Mitchum from inside the station.
“Yes,” Harvey said. “He was clomping out of the library like always.”
“He’s always snooping around,” Mimi said. “Maybe he can snoop around this case.”
“You think Snicket can help us?” Harvey called back to his wife in disbelief.
“It can’t hurt to ask him while we wait for Stew,” Mimi said.
“You ask him,” Harvey said. He had turned all the way around, the better to snap at his wife, and for the first time in all my days in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, I had a close-up look at the back of Harvey Mitchum’s head. If you would like to see what I saw, simply imagine a field of greasy, graying grass.
“You’re right there,” Mimi said. “I’m watching the suspects.”
“I can watch them from here,” Harvey said. “You come on over and talk to the kid.”
“You do it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Don’t be a baby, Harvey.”
“Don’t be an infant, Mimi.”
“Don’t be a fetus.”
“Don’t be a zygote.”
“Don’t be a woman and a man—”
I tapped Harvey Mitchum and the gray field turned around. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” I said. “I’m happy to be of assistance.”
“You don’t look happy,” he said.
“I don’t mean cheerful,” I said. “I mean willing.”
“Willing is more help than my husband,” Mimi said from inside the station, and I maneuvered my way around Harvey’s large, grumpy body into the station. It wasn’t much more than a room with a couple of desks, a few file cabinets, and the smell of Mitchums, and in the back was a small cell that held prisoners until the train came from the city to transport them to trial. The cell was damp and cramped and couldn’t hold very many people, and right then it held three men with grim mouths and stubbly chins, as if half their beards had gone on vacation. Mimi Mitchum was sitting in a chair watching every move they were making, which was none.
“Come here,” she said, beckoning behind her back. I approached. Mimi’s hair looked very similar to her husband’s. When this was over, I wanted to go look at a real lawn for a change. “These three men,” Mimi said, “are suspects in a recent theft. Last night, Polly Partial received a shipment of twenty blueberry pies. This morning she counted them and came up short.”
“How many are missing?” I asked.
“Last night she had twenty,” Harvey said, shutting the station door, “and today she counted zero. So at least eighteen are missing.”
“At least,” I agreed.
“Polly Partial saw a man in a red coat loading pies into a van marked with a French horn,” Mimi said. “These three brothers run the only French horn factory left in town, and their uniforms include red coats.”
“Are you sure Ms. Partial is giving you an accurate account?” I asked, remembering how unreliable she had been as a witness recently.
“Sure we’re sure,” Mimi said, “but we’re not sure which of the three is responsible.”
I stepped forward and looked at the three men. The first was wearing a red coat. The second had a long work apron on, smudged here and there with black. The third wore a white T-shirt stained with blueberries.
“Don’t look at me,” said the first brother. “I’m innocent. Sure, I’m wearing a red coat, but I was nowhere near Partial Foods last night. I had to take over a shipment of French horns to the Devotee Symphony.”
“Don’t look at me either,” said the man in the apron. “I was at the factory all day, polishing the last French horns we manufactured. We’re closing down Tuesday, and we’re all leaving town.”
I turned my eyes to the blueberry-stained man and wondered if he would also proclaim his innocence. “I’d prefer you not look at me either,” he said, and coughed a little.
“Now, maybe it’s just because I’m tired,” Harvey Mitchum said, scratching his head. “I admit that Mimi and I stayed up very late watching a double feature of scary movies.”
“Something with zombies in the winter,” Mimi said, “and something with giant bugs. We were scared out of our minds, and we’ve been exhausted all day. But this crime has stumped us, Snicket.”
“Particularly Mimi,” Harvey said.
“Particularly you,” Mimi retorted.
“Particularly the way you snore,” Harvey said.
“Particularly the way you drip-dry your socks in the bathroom,” Mimi said.
“Those socks are part of my uniform, Mimi. If they’re not clean, the law won’t be clean.”
“I wear police socks, too,” Mimi said, “but I dry them in the machine.”
“Perhaps,” I said, before their argument took up the rest of my day, “I could question each of the suspects.”
“Ask them anything you want,” Harvey said with a dismissive gesture, like he was too tired to care about truth and justice and wanted to go home and watch some more giant bugs. In some ways, I could hardly blame him. It is more interesting to watch giant bugs and whatever they might do in a scary movie than to solve a minor and unimaginative crime. I looked at the three ragged men. All they wanted was to make French horns, and now they were in a jail cell in a town that was twisting itself into knots like the very instrument they manufactured. What will happen to them, I wondered, but it was not the question I asked.
I turned to the first brother. “Who is your favorite French writer?”
“Alain-Fournier,” the man said, fiddling with one of the buttons on his red coat.
I turned to the second brother. “Who is your favorite jazz saxophonist?”
“Harry Carney,” the man replied, brushing off his apron.
I turned to the third man. “And you,” I asked. “What is your favorite food?”
The man shrugged his shoulders and gave a sigh of resignation, a phrase which here means he gave up. Perhaps he felt guilty, or perhaps he had also stayed up too late, scared or worried, and did not have the energy to be as clever as some other criminals I had encountered. It was a moment before he spoke, but “Blueberry pies” is what he said.
I turned to the Mitchums, who glared back at me, impatient and tired as the law itself. “I’ve solved the case,” I told them.
The conclusion to “Three Suspects” is filed under “Very Obvious,” here.
VANISHED MESSAGE.
It was another average morning with S. Theodora Markson in the Far East Suite. We were having a continental breakfast. In most cases, “continental breakfast” is a phrase which means “plenty of pastries and cereal, along with juice and coffee or tea.” In my case, it meant just cereal, but we didn’t have any bowls, so Theodora had simply poured a helping of Schoenberg Cereal onto the bureau, and I picked up the grainy flakes one by one and dipped them into the open milk carton. It felt like something an ant would do, although at least an ant has a colony of comrades for companionship. I just had my chaperone and her wild, enormous hair, which this morning had not one but two hairbrushes stuck in the back. I did not know if they were stuck there on purpose or by accident, and thinking about that made my morning seem even more ridiculous than it already was.
“Eat up, Snicket,” Theodora was saying. “It says here on the back of the box that growing boys should have eleven servings of necessary nutrients per day.”
“I’ve counted sixty-eight servings,” I said.
“A single flake is not a serving, Snicket.”
“It feels like one if you have to pinch it between your fingers and dip it into a carton of milk.”
“A rug feels like a lion, but that doesn’t mean you can ride it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Think about it, Snicket.”
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“I am thinking about it. Nobody rides lions.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“You have to figure some things out yourself, Snicket. I can’t spoon-feed you everything.”
“I wish you’d spoon-feed me breakfast,” I said. “This feels like it’s taking forever.”
“A rug feels like—”
There was a knock on the door before she could try to teach me the lesson again. The only rug that feels like a lion is made of lion.
“Who is it?” I asked, swallowing one last flake.
“Mail for Mr. Lemony Snicket,” said a deep voice from behind the door.
“We can hear perfectly well that you’re male,” Theodora said. “But which male? We can’t just let any man or boy into this room.”
“An envelope, not the opposite of female,” said the voice. “It’s special delivery. I must put it directly in Mr. Snicket’s hands.”
I had been curious about the mail delivery in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. It surprised me that the fading town still had a working postal service, and the speedy delivery of a mysterious package was an important part of my biggest case. I was very interested in seeing a postman at last, but it was Theodora who opened the door, and her enormous hair blocked my view, so I only saw a white-gloved hand reaching toward me, as if through a wild bush growing hairbrushes, and in an instant the envelope was in my hand and the door was shut again.
“Let me see that,” Theodora said.
“It’s addressed to me,” I said, looking at the envelope. “I will read it in my morning bath.”