"Leep!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "Captain Sham threw Aunt Josephine out the window and then wrote this note to hide his crime."
"What a terrible thing to do," Klaus said, shuddering as he thought of Aunt Josephine falling into the lake she feared so much.
"Imagine the terrible things he will do to us," Violet said, "if we don't expose his crime. I can't wait until Mr. Poe gets here so we can tell him what happened."
With perfect timing, the doorbell rang, and the Baudelaires hurried to answer it. Violet led her siblings down the hallway, looking wistfully at the radiator as she remembered how afraid of it Aunt Josephine was. Klaus followed closely behind, touching each doorknob gently in memory of Aunt Josephine's warnings about them shattering into pieces. And when they reached the door, Sunny looked mournfully at the welcome mat that Aunt Josephine thought could cause someone to break their neck. Aunt Josephine had been so careful to avoid anything that she thought might harm her, but harm had still come her way.
Violet opened the peeling white door, and there stood Mr. Poe in the gloomy light of dawn. "Mr. Poe," Violet said. She intended to tell him immediately of their forgery theory, but as soon as she saw him, standing in the doorway with a white handkerchief in one hand and a black briefcase in the other, her words stuck in her throat. Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason. "Mr. Poe," Violet said again, and without any warning she and her siblings burst into tears. Violet cried, her shoulders shaking with sobs, and Klaus cried, the tears making his glasses slip down his nose, and Sunny cried, her open mouth revealing her four teeth. Mr. Poe put down his briefcase and put away his handkerchief. He was not very good at comforting people, but he put his arms around the children the best he could, and murmured "There, there," which is a phrase some people murmur to comfort other people despite the fact that it doesn't really mean anything.
Mr. Poe couldn't think of anything else to say that might have comforted the Baudelaire orphans, but I wish now that I had the power to go back in time and speak to these three sobbing children. If I could, I could tell the Baudelaires that like earthquakes and puppet shows, their tears were occurring not only without warning but without good reason. The youngsters were crying, of course, because they thought Aunt Josephine was dead, and I wish I had the power to go back and tell them that they were wrong. But of course, I cannot. I am not on top of the hill, overlooking Lake Lachrymose, on that gloomy morning. I am sitting in my room, in the middle of the night, writing down this story and looking out my window at the graveyard behind my home. I cannot tell the Baudelaire orphans that they are wrong, but I can tell you, as the orphans cry in Mr. Poe's arms, that Aunt Josephine is not dead. Not yet.
CHAPTER Six
Mr. Poe frowned, sat down at the table, and took out his handkerchief. "Forgery?" he repeated. The Baudelaire orphans had shown him the shattered window in the library. They had shown him the note that had been thumb-tacked to the door. And they had shown him the business card with the grammatical mistake on it. "Forgery is a very serious charge," he said sternly, and blew his nose.
"Not as serious as murder," Klaus pointed out. "And that's what Captain Sham did. He murdered Aunt Josephine and forged a note."
"But why would this Captain Sham person,"
Mr. Poe asked, "go to all this trouble just to place you under his care?"
"We've already told you," Violet said, trying to hide her impatience. "Captain Sham is really Count Olaf in disguise."
"These are very serious accusations," Mr. Poe said firmly. "I understand that the three of you have had some terrible experiences, and I hope you're not letting your imagination get the best of you. Remember when you lived with Uncle Monty? You were convinced that his assistant, Stephano, was really Count Olaf in disguise."
"But Stephano was Count Olaf in disguise," Klaus exclaimed.
"That's not the point," Mr. Poe said. "The point is that you can't jump to conclusions. If you really think this note is a forgery, then we have to stop talking about disguises and do an investigation. Somewhere in this house, I'm sure we can find something that your Aunt Josephine has written. We can compare the handwriting and see if this note matches up."
The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another. "Of course," Klaus said. "If the note we found on the library door doesn't match Aunt Josephine's handwriting, then it was obviously written by somebody else. We didn't think of that."
Mr. Poe smiled. "You see? You are very intelligent children, but even the most intelligent people in the world often need the help of a banker. Now, where can we find a sample of Aunt Josephine's handwriting?"
"In the kitchen," Violet said promptly. "She left her shopping list in the kitchen when we got home from the market."
"Chuni!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "Let's go to the kitchen and get it," and that's exactly what they did. Aunt Josephine's kitchen was very small and had a large white sheet covering the stove and the oven-for safety, Aunt Josephine had explained, during her tour. There was a countertop where she prepared the food, a refrigerator where she stored the food, and a sink where she washed away the food nobody had eaten. To one side of the coun-tertop was a small piece of paper on which Aunt Josephine had made her list, and Violet crossed the kitchen to retrieve it. Mr. Poe turned on the lights, and Violet held the shopping list up to the note to see if they matched.
There are men and women who are experts in the field of handwriting analysis. They are called graphologists, and they attend grapho-logical schools in order to get their degree in graphology. You might think that this situation would call for a graphologist, but there are times when an expert's opinion is unnecessary. For instance, if a friend of yours brought you her pet dog, and said she was concerned because it wasn't laying eggs, you would not have to be a veterinarian to tell her that dogs do not lay eggs and so there was nothing to worry about.
Yes, there are some questions that are so simple that anyone can answer them, and Mr. Poe and the Baudelaire orphans instantly knew the answer to the question "Does the handwriting on the shopping list match the handwriting on the note?" The answer was yes. When Aunt Josephine had written "Vinegar" on the shopping list, she had curved the tips of the V into tiny spirals-the same spirals that decorated the tips of the V in "Violet," on the note. When she had written "Cucumbers" on the shopping list, the Cs were slightly squiggly, like earthworms, and the same earthworms appeared in the words "cold" and "Captain Sham" on the note. When Aunt Josephine had written "Limes" on the shopping list, the i was dotted with an oval rather than a circle, just as it was in "my life will be at it's end." There was no doubt that Aunt Josephine had written on both the pieces of paper that Mr. Poe and the Baudelaires were examining.
"I don't think there's any doubt that Aunt Josephine wrote on both these pieces of paper," Mr. Poe said.
"But-" Violet began.
"There are no buts about it," Mr. Poe said. "Look at the curvy Vs. Look at the squiggly C's. Look at the oval dots over the I's. I'm no graphologist, but I can certainly tell that these were written by the same person."
"You're right," Klaus said miserably. "I know that Captain Sham is behind this somehow, but Aunt Josephine definitely wrote this note."
"And that," Mr. Poe said, "makes it a legal document."
"Does that mean we have to live with Captain Sham?" Violet asked, her heart sinking.
"I'm afraid so," Mr. Poe replied. "Someone's last will and testament is an o
fficial statement of the wishes of the deceased. You were placed in Aunt Josephine's care, so she had the right to assign you to a new caretaker before she leaped out the window. It is very shocking, certainly, but it is entirely legal."
"We won't go live with him," Klaus said fiercely. "He's the worst person on earth."
"He'll do something terrible, I know it,"
Violet said. "All he's after is the Baudelaire fortune."
"Gind!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like "Please don't make us live with this evil man."
"I know you don't like this Captain Sham person," Mr. Poe said, "but there's not much I can do about it. I'm afraid the law says that that's where you'll go."
"We'll run away," Klaus said.
"You will do nothing of the kind," Mr. Poe said sternly. "Your parents entrusted me to see that you would be cared for properly. You want to honor your parents' wishes, don't you?"
"Well, yes," Violet said, "but-"
"Then please don't make a fuss," Mr. Poe said. "Think of what your poor mother and father would say if they knew you were threatening to run away from your guardian."
The Baudelaire parents, of course, would have been horrified to learn that their children were to be in the care of Captain Sham, but before the children could say this to Mr. Poe, he had moved on to other matters. "Now, I think the easiest thing to do would be to meet with Captain Sham and go over some details. Where is his business card? I'll phone him now."
"On the table, in the dining room," Klaus said glumly, and Mr. Poe left the kitchen to make the call. The Baudelaires looked at Aunt Josephine's shopping list and the suicide note.
"I just can't believe it," Violet said. "I was sure we were on the right track with the forgery idea."