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Chapter One
If you are interested in stories with
happy endings, you would be better off
reading some other book. In this book, not
only is there no happy ending, there is no
happy beginning and very few happy things
in the middle. This is because not very
many happy things happened in the lives of
the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet,
Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were
intelligent children, and they were
charming, and resourceful, and had
pleasant facial features, but they were
extremely unlucky, and most everything
that happened to them was rife with
misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry
to tell you this, but that is how the
story goes.
Their misfortune began one day at Briny
Beach. The three Baudelaire children lived
with their parents in an enormous mansion
at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and
occasionally their parents gave them
permission to take a rickety trolley-the
word "rickety," you probably know, here
means "unsteady" or "likely to
collapse"-alone to the seashore, where
they would spend the day as a sort of
vacation as long as they were home for
dinner. This particular morning it was
gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the
Baudelaire youngsters one bit. When it was
hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded
with tourists and it was impossible to
find a good place to lay one's blanket. On
gray and cloudy days, the Baudelaires had
the beach to themselves to do what they
liked.
Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, liked to
skip rocks. Like most fourteen-year-olds,
she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped
farther across the murky water when Violet
used her right hand than when she used her
left. As she skipped rocks, she was
looking out at the horizon and thinking
about an invention she wanted to build.
Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she
was thinking hard, because her long hair
was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of
her eyes. Violet had a real knack for
inventing and building strange devices, so
her brain was often filled with images of
pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never
wanted to be distracted by something as
trivial as her hair. This morning she was
thinking about how to construct a device
that could retrieve a rock after you had
skipped it into the ocean.
Klaus Baudelaire, the middle child, and
the only boy, liked to examine creatures
in tidepools. Klaus was a little older
than twelve and wore glasses, which made
him look intelligent. He was intelligent.
The Baudelaire parents had an enormous
library in their mansion, a room filled
with thousands of books on nearly every
subject. Being only twelve, Klaus of
course had not read all of the books in
the Baudelaire library, but he had read a
great many of them and had retained a lot
of the information from his readings. He
knew how to tell an alligator from a
crocodile. He knew who killed Julius
Caesar. And he knew much about the tiny,
slimy animals found at Briny Beach, which
he was examining now.
Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest, liked
to bite things. She was an infant, and
very small for her age, scarcely larger
than a boot. What she lacked in size,
however, she made up for with the size and
sharpness of her four teeth. Sunny was at
an age where one mostly speaks in a series
of unintelligible shrieks. Except when she
used the few actual words in her
vocabulary, like "bottle," "mommy," and
"bite," most people had trouble
understanding what it was that Sunny was
saying. For instance, this morning she was
saying "Gack!" over and over, which
probably meant, "Look at that mysterious
figure emerging from the fog!"
Sure enough, in the distance along the
misty shore of Briny Beach there could be
seen a tall figure striding toward the
Baudelaire children. Sunny had already
been staring and shrieking at the figure
for some time when Klaus looked up from
the spiny crab he was examining, and saw
it too. He reached over and touched
Violet's arm, bringing her out of her
inventing thoughts.
"Look at that," Klaus said, and pointed
toward the figure. It was drawing closer,
and the children could see a few details.
It was about the size of an adult, except
its head was tall, and rather square.
"What do you think it is?" Violet
asked.
"I don't know," Klaus said, squinting
at it, "but it seems to be moving right
toward us."
"We're alone on the beach," Violet
said, a little nervously. "There's nobody
else it could be moving toward." She felt
the slender, smooth stone in her left
hand, which she had been about to try to
skip as far as she could. She had a sudden
thought to throw it at the figure, because
it seemed so frightening.
"It only seems scary," Klaus said, as
if reading his sister's thoughts, "because
of all the mist."
This was true. As the figure reached
them, the children saw with relief that it
was not anybody frightening at all, but
somebody they knew: Mr. Poe. Mr. Poe was a
friend of Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire's whom
the children had met many times at dinner
parties. One of the things Violet, Klaus,
and Sunny really liked about their parents
was that they didn't send their children
away when they had company over, but
allowed them to join the adults at the
dinner table and participate in the
conversation as long as they helped clear
the table. The children remembered Mr. Poe
because he always had a cold and was
constantly excusing himself from the table
to have a fit of coughing in the next
room.
Mr. Poe took off his top hat, which had
made his head look large and square in the
fog, and stood for a moment, coughing
loudly into a white handkerchief. Violet
and Klaus moved forward to shake his hand
and say how do you do.
"How do you do?" said Violet.
"How do you do?" said Klaus.
"Odo yow!" said Sunny.
"Fine, thank you," said Mr. Poe, but he
looked very sad. For a few seconds nobody
said anything, and the children wondered
what Mr. Poe was doing there at Briny
Beach, when he should have been at the
bank in the city, where he worked. He was
not dressed for the beach.
"It's a nice day," Violet said finally,
making conversation. Sunny made a noise
that sounded like an angry bird, and Klaus
picked her up and held her.
"Yes, it is a nice day," Mr. Poe said
absently, staring out at the empty beach.
"I'm afraid I have some very bad news for
you children."
The three Baudelaire siblings looked at
him. Violet, with some embarrassment, felt
the stone in her left hand and was glad
she had not thrown it at Mr. Poe.
"Your parents," Mr. Poe said, "have
perished in a terrible fire."
The children didn't say anything.
"They perished," Mr. Poe said, "in a
fire which destroyed the entire house. I'm
very, very sorry to tell you this, my
dears."
Violet took her eyes off Mr. Poe and
stared out at the ocean. Mr. Poe had never
called the Baudelaire children "my dears"
before. She understood the words he was
saying but thought he must be joking,
playing a terrible joke on her and her
brother and sister.
"'Perished,'" Mr. Poe said, "means
'killed.'"
"We know what the word 'perished'
means," Klaus said, crossly. He did know
what the word "perished" meant, but he was
still having trouble understanding exactly
what it was that Mr. Poe had said. It
seemed to him that Mr. Poe must somehow
have misspoken.
"The fire department arrived, of
course," Mr. Poe said, "but they were too
late. The entire house was engulfed in
fire. It burned to the ground."
Klaus pictured all the books in the
library, going up in flames. Now he'd
never read all of them.Mr. Poe coughed
several times into his handkerchief before
continuing. "I was sent to retrieve you
here, and to take you to my home, where
you'll stay for some time while we figure
things out. I am the executor of your
parents' estate. That means I will be
handling their enormous fortune and
figuring out where you children will go.
When Violet comes of age, the fortune will
be yours, but the bank will take charge of
it until you are old enough."
Although he said he was the executor,
Violet felt like Mr. Poe was the
executioner. He had simply walked down the
beach to them and changed their lives
forever.
"Come with me," Mr. Poe said, and held
out his hand. In order to take it, Violet
had to drop the stone she was holding.
Klaus took Violet's other hand, and Sunny
took Klaus's other hand, and in that
manner the three Baudelaire children-the
Baudelaire orphans, now-were led away from
the beach and from their previous
lives.
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