“Cleo Knight woke up yesterday morning and had her usual breakfast of Schoenberg Cereal,” I said. “She was wearing brand-new clothes that were black and white, and an old hat that was somewhat pink. She ran away to join the circus and didn’t leave a note, but that couldn’t have happened, because she’s a brilliant chemist, not a circus performer, and the people who know her best say she definitely would have left a note. She was seen at Partial Foods by Polly Partial at ten thirty buying Schoenberg Cereal and leaving in a taxicab, but that couldn’t have happened, because she’d driven there in her brand-new Dilemma.”
“That’s a nice car,” Moxie said.
“Mind the ears,” I said. “Now, Cleo Knight was also seen at Hungry’s by Jake Hix, also at ten thirty, and she left in the Dilemma. But that can’t have happened, because the Dilemma is parked nearby with a flat tire.”
“That’s a lot of things that couldn’t have happened,” Moxie said.
“Either Polly Partial is wrong,” I said, “or Jake Hix is wrong.”
“Or they’re both wrong.”
“That’s true. Do you know either of them?”
“I know both of them,” Moxie said, “but not that well. It’s the Knights I’m thinking about, though. They must be worried sick.”
“The housekeepers are worried sick,” I said. “Mr. and Mrs. Knight are in a state of unhurried delirium.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Moxie said, moving around to the back of my head.
“It means their personal apothecary is giving them regular injections of laudanum,” I said. “It’s a drug that makes you sleepy and strange. What do you know about the Knight family?”
Moxie walked around to face me and frowned. I could not tell if she was frowning at the thought of the Knights or at the way she’d cut my hair. “Well, Ingrid Nummet Knight, Cleo’s grandmother, was the genius who founded Ink Inc. along with her business partner, Colonel Colophon, our town’s greatest war hero. Ingrid died some time ago and left the company to her son, Ignatius Nettle Knight. Cleo’s father is not a genius at all, nor a scientist. He is a tycoon, which is a sort of businessperson, and business has not gone well.”
“You can say that again.”
“Business has not gone well.”
“Cut it out, Moxie. What happened to the business partner?”
“Colonel Colophon has suffered terrible injuries.”
“War is terrible,” I said.
“Yes it is,” Moxie said, “but Colonel Colophon was not injured in the war. He was injured at the unveiling of the statue in his honor. It was a huge statue, right in front of the library, depicting him untangling a child’s kite from a tree while a battle raged all around him. But there was an explosion at the unveiling, and the colonel suffered terrible burns. There was a special clinic built, way out on the outskirts of town, to help him with his injuries. The colonel was wrapped up in so many bandages he looked like a mummy. He’s lived at the clinic ever since. I’m too young to remember, but I’m sure there was a picture in the paper. I can find it for you if you like.”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I know what a mummy looks like. But back to the Knight family, please. How did Cleo’s father ruin the business?”
“It was his idea to drain the sea so that Ink Inc. might harvest the last of the octopi inkwells. It turned out to be a very expensive plan.”
“Expensive or not, if he hadn’t done that, there’d be no ink in this town at all.”
“That’s what’s going to happen anyway,” Moxie said sadly, and put down her scissors. “The last of the octopi live down in those wells. One day those enormous needles will find that they’ve poked the very last one, and then nothing will be left. I don’t like to think about it.”
“I don’t like needles either,” I said, and took one out of my pocket.
“What’s that?” Moxie asked.
“A different sort of needle,” I said. “The kind a doctor might use.”
“You shouldn’t carry a hypodermic needle around in your pocket, Snicket.”
“That’s true,” I said. “It could puncture me. This needle’s big enough to puncture a tire.”
“Such as the tire of the Dilemma,” Moxie said. “Is that where you found it?”
“You’re a very good journalist, Moxie.”
“Yes,” Moxie said, “but I’m not a very good barber.”
She took the bowl off my head and held up a frying pan, shiny enough so that I might look at my reflection. It was nothing I would want to see illustrated, but it was not so very ghastly.
“You look like Stew Mitchum,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“That’s not what I meant. What I mean is, how are you going to use that haircut to stop that doctor?”
“Stop Dr. Flammarion?”
“Don’t you suspect him?”
“Well, he’s suspicious,” I said, “but why would he kidnap Cleo?”
“To get ransom money from the Knights.”
“They’re in such a state of unhurried delirium that he could steal whatever he wanted without going to the trouble of kidnapping. Besides, most of the ink money is gone.”
Moxie sighed and gave me a careful look. “Is this Hangfire’s work?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s wickedness. But exactly what kind of wickedness is what I’m going to find out.”
“You and Theodora?” she asked me.
“Theodora believes the circus story.”
“What do you believe?”
“I believe I need to go back into town,” I said.
“I believe I need to go with you.”
“Moxie—”
“Don’t argue with me, Snicket. I want to find out what’s going on. Now sweep up your hair while I take some notes.”
I found a broom, and Moxie turned to her typewriter. I swept and she typed furiously. Some people are so sentimental that they keep locks of hair from people they love, but nobody wanted what I was sweeping. I thought of Ellington Feint’s missing father and wondered if he’d left anything behind that she kept, for sentimental reasons. Moxie typed even faster, as if she knew what I was thinking about and it annoyed her. I dumped my hair into the trash, and she closed her typewriter.
“Let’s go,” Moxie said.
“Don’t you have to tell your father you’re going out?”
“I’m going out!” she called to her father, and we walked out of the lighthouse and up to the waiting taxi.
“Back into town, Snicket?” Pip asked, as his brother crawled down to the pedals.
“Partial Foods, please,” I said, “and if you like stories about strange happenings, allow me to recommend a book about a girl named Amanda, who is either a witch or a stepsister or both.”
Pip started up the motor and handed me a scrap of paper. “Sounds good,” he said. “Write down the title for me, will you?”
“He will if you answer a question,” Moxie piped up. “Pip, did you and your brother take Cleo Knight anywhere yesterday morning, say about ten thirty?”
It is difficult to actually kick yourself in the back of an automobile, so I just imagined doing it, for failing to ask this question myself.
“Cleo Knight’s never been in our cab,” Squeak said from the floor, “and I can’t say I blame her, with a Dilemma like that.”
“Then Polly Partial was lying,” Moxie murmured to me, “and Jake Hix was telling the truth.”
I put a picture of Polly Partial in my head, and then one of Jake Hix right next to it. The grocer was an unpleasant person, but she didn’t seem like a liar. Jake Hix, on the other hand, seemed like a decent fellow who read good books and cooked good soup. But even though I didn’t know what the truth was, I knew he hadn’t told me it when I’d asked about Cleo Knight.
“It’s good to know who are the bad guys and who are the good guys,” Moxie continued, but I shook my head. It is often said that people do things because they are good or evil, but in my experience that is no
t the case. Ellington Feint, for example, had lied to me and stolen, but not because she was an evil person. She was a good person, forced to do bad things in order to free her father from Hangfire’s clutches. My sister, for another example, was certainly a good person, but she was soon to commit a crime with one of the items in the museum. As far as I could tell, people didn’t do things because they were good or evil. They did things because they could not think of what else to do, and the only thing I could think of was finding out what was going on in this town.
“Here we are,” Pip said, tapping his brother to put on the brakes. “Partial Foods. Want me to wait again, Snicket?”
“No, thanks,” I said, and handed him the scrap of paper. “Can you read that long word? It’s ‘headless.’ ”
Pip nodded at me, but he was looking somewhere far past the windshield. Moxie and I got out of the car, and the Bellerophon brothers drove off down the empty street. “Stay close,” I told the journalist, “but you don’t want to be seen with me right now.”
Moxie opened up her typewriter. “Why not?”
“Because I’m about to be arrested,” I said, and strode into the supermarket. It looked as tired as usual, with a few customers here and there among the aisles of exhausted food. I paced through the place for a few minutes, and Moxie paced along with me, although always in a different aisle and always with a look on her face like she was searching for a particular item. She was good at it. I found Polly Partial soon enough, wheeling a large stack of canned soup toward a remote corner of the place.
“Hello,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”
Polly frowned. “I don’t remember you.”
“I knocked over a display once,” I said, “and sent pineapples tumbling all over the place.”
“Oh yes,” Polly said, and blew some air into her frown so it was bigger.
“No,” I said, “that wasn’t me.” I turned on my heel and walked quickly toward the basket of honeydew melons. Wherever you can find a honeydew melon, you can find other melons. All other melons are better. There is really no point to having a honeydew melon under any circumstances whatsoever. I picked up two honeydew melons in my hands, checked to make sure Polly Partial was watching me, and then dashed quickly out the door. I heard Moxie gasp.
“Stop, thief!” Polly Partial called to me. “Stop or I’ll call the police!”
Of course I didn’t stop. The police were who I wanted called.
CHAPTER FIVE
I heard the police siren sooner than I would have thought. I’d had just enough time to kneel down next to the curb and quickly hide the honeydew melons under the Dilemma. I stood up and brushed off my pants just as the dented station wagon of Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only police officers pulled up in front of Partial Foods. As usual, there was a red flashlight taped to the roof of the car, instead of a police car’s usual flashing light, and the siren sound came from a boy about my age sitting in the backseat. Stew Mitchum had the ability to mimic the irritating sound of a siren, and this was not the only irritating ability he had displayed to me. He was the sort of child who was nasty to everyone but behaved like an angel when his parents were watching. There is nothing to be done about such people in the world. It is best not even to talk to them, but Stew saw me and hopped out of the automobile while his parents walked into Partial Foods. Harvey and Mimi Mitchum were arguing, as they were always doing, and Stew had his usual wicked smile.
“I thought you’d left town, Lemon Drop,” he said to me. “Stain’d-by-the-Sea doesn’t have room for idiots.”
“Really?” I said. “I heard they could get jobs as police sirens.”
“I’m glad you think police work is so funny,” Stew said. “My parents got a report of a young thief at Partial Foods. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I’m just here to admire this Dilemma,” I said, “and of course to chat with a charming person such as yourself.”
“Call me charming again and I’ll slug you,” Stew growled, but then he had to give me a wide, friendly smile, because the Officers Mitchum were coming back out of the supermarket.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Stew said, and ran to the officers. “I missed you so much.”
“What a sweetheart,” said Mimi Mitchum, as her son gave her a large, false hug. “We missed you too, Stewie. But we have a crime to solve.”
“An important crime,” corrected her husband.
“All crime is important, Harvey.”
“But some crimes are more important than others.”
“I don’t think we should argue about it in front of the B-O-Y.”
“Stewart knows how to spell ‘boy,’ Mimi. There’s no reason to spell it out.”
“And there’s no reason for you to boss me around like that, Harvey.”
“Mimi—”
“Don’t Mimi me, Harvey.”
“Well, don’t Harvey me.”
“How can I not Harvey you when your name’s Harvey?”
I hadn’t been in Stain’d-by-the-Sea very long, but I’d long ago learned the Officers Mitchum would continue arguing until someone interrupted them. “Hello, Officers,” I said. “I haven’t seen you for quite some time.”
Harvey and Mimi Mitchum stopped scowling at each other and turned their gaze to me. They had a look on their faces that they probably thought was intimidating. “Intimidating” is a word meaning it was supposed to scare me, but instead I just wondered what they had eaten recently that made them frown.
“Lemony Snicket,” Harvey Mitchum said. “The last time we saw you was during all that unpleasantness with the stolen statue, and now here you are at the scene of another theft.”
“A theft?” I said. “Egad!”
“Don’t talk with four-letter words,” Mimi Mitchum said to me, covering Stewie’s ears.
“There are four four-letter words in the sentence ‘Don’t talk with four-letter words,’ ” I said. I was being cheeky, but I was afraid that if I were polite, I might not get arrested.
“That’s it,” Harvey Mitchum said. “You’re under arrest, Snicket. Come with us.”
He grabbed my arm, and then Mimi Mitchum said that she ought to be the one to be taking my arm because he had taken the arms of the last three people they had arrested, and Harvey said it didn’t matter one way or another who took the arm of someone they were arresting, and Mimi said if it didn’t matter who took the arm of someone they arrested, why couldn’t she be the one taking my arm, and he said he’d prefer not to talk about it any further in front of the B-O-Y, and Mimi reminded him that he had reminded her that their intelligent, sensitive boy could certainly spell a simple three-letter word, as opposed to me, who used four-letter words all the time and needed to be arrested right away. It was interesting to watch Stewie’s face as his parents bickered. He reminded me of a shark I had seen once in the aquarium, circling a tank while schoolchildren tapped on the glass. Someday, the shark seemed to be thinking, I will no longer be trapped like this. I will be in the open water, right where you’ll be swimming. On that day you’d better watch out.
But it was not Stew who interrupted the bickering Mitchums. “What’s going on, Officers?” Moxie Mallahan said, stepping out of Partial Foods and reaching into the brim of her hat. She kept cards there, printed with her name and occupation. She handed one to each of the Mitchums to remind them who she was. They did not look happy to be reminded.
“This is police business,” said the male Officer Mitchum. “There was a honeydew theft at Partial Foods, and we are just arresting a suspect.”
“Who are you arresting?” Moxie asked. “Why have you arrested him? How did you decide he was a suspect? What evidence do you have? Where are the melons?”
“This young man,” Mimi Mitchum said, pointing at me, “was seen loitering outside the supermarket. He has a history of suspicious activities. We’re bringing him down to the police station to be identified by the witness. It’s still too early to make assumptions, but it wouldn’t be
surprising if this Snicket lad here ends up in jail for a very long time.”
The Officers Mitchum always said it was too early to make assumptions. They apparently enjoyed doing things early. “Mind if I tag along?” Moxie asked. “I’d like to see how this plays out.”
“There are no newspapers left in this town,” Harvey Mitchum said suspiciously. “How can you be a journalist?”
“That’s the wrong question,” Moxie said with a small smile. “The question is, how can a town find out what’s going on if nobody’s there to report it?”
The Officers Mitchum grunted and shrugged, and opened the back door of the station wagon to pile us all in. Moxie went in first and then me and then Stew. It is uncomfortable to sit in the middle seat, but Stew had a habit of pinching people, and I thought Moxie would want to avoid that. It was the least I could do. After a short argument over who should drive, Mimi started the engine and Stew made his siren noise out the window as we drove through town.
The police station at Stain’d-by-the-Sea was half of a building that had once been City Hall. The other half was the library, where I spent a great deal of my time. The building was a shadow of its former self, which means that it once looked nice but now was as fading as anything else in town, with two big, crumbling pillars and a set of front stairs covered in cracks. Harvey Mitchum took me out of the car, and Moxie and Stew followed behind us while Mimi Mitchum turned the station wagon around and drove away. We walked across the lawn to the building, passing a sculpture so damaged I could never identify it. I looked at it differently this time. I thought of a war hero, and the day the statue was unveiled.
The police station turned out to be one long room, about the size of a bus. At the back of the bus was Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only jail cell, with thick metal bars and a small cot for a prisoner to sleep on. There was no prisoner, asleep or awake. The rest of the room was taken up with desks, chairs, cabinets, tables, and endless piles of paper that make every office look the same and boring.