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Chapter One
No matter who you are, no matter where
you live, and no matter how many people
are chasing you, what you don't read is
often as important as what you do read.
For instance, if you are walking in the
mountains, and you don't read the sign
that says "Beware of Cliff" because you
are busy reading a joke book instead, you
may suddenly find yourself walking on air
rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If
you are baking a pie for your friends, and
you read an article entitled "How to Build
a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie
will probably end up tasting like wood and
nails instead of like crust and fruity
filling. And if you insist on reading this
book instead of something more cheerful,
you will most certainly find yourself
moaning in despair instead of wriggling in
delight, so if you have any sense at all
you will put this book down and pick up
another one. I know of a book, for
instance, called The Littlest Elf, which
tells the story of a teensy-weensy little
man who scurries around Fairyland having
all sorts of adorable adventures, and you
can see at once that you should probably
read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the
lovely things that happened to this
imaginary creature in a made-up place,
instead of reading this book and moaning
over the terrible things that happened to
the three Baudelaire orphans in the
village where I am now typing these very
words. The misery, woe, and treachery
contained in the pages of this book are so
dreadful that it is important that you
don't read any more of it than you already
have.
The Baudelaire orphans, at the time
this story begins, were certainly wishing
that they weren't reading the newspaper
that was in front of their eyes. A
newspaper, as I'm sure you know, is a
collection of supposedly true stories
written down by writers who either saw
them happen or talked to people who did.
These writers are called journalists, and
like telephone operators, butchers,
ballerinas, and people who clean up after
horses, journalists can sometimes make
mistakes. This was certainly the case with
the front page of the morning edition of
The Daily Punctilio, which the Baudelaire
children were reading in the office of Mr.
Poe. "twins captured by count omar," the
headline read, and the three siblings
looked at one another in amazement over
the mistakes that The Daily Punctilio's
journalists had made.
"ëDuncan and Isadora Quagmire,'"
Violet read out loud, "ëtwin children
who are the only known surviving members
of the Quagmire family, have been
kidnapped by the notorious Count Omar.
Omar is wanted by the police for a variety
of dreadful crimes, and is easily
recognized by his one long eyebrow, and
the tattoo of an eye on his left ankle.
Omar has also kidnapped Esme Squalor, the
city's sixth most important financial
advisor, for reasons unknown.' Ugh!" The
word "Ugh!" was not in the newspaper, of
course, but was something Violet uttered
herself as a way of saying she was too
disgusted to read any further. "If I
invented something as sloppily as this
newspaper writes its stories," she said,
"it would fall apart immediately." Violet,
who at fourteen was the eldest Baudelaire
child, was an excellent inventor, and
spent a great deal of time with her hair
tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her
eyes as she thought of new mechanical
devices.
"And if I read books as sloppily,"
Klaus said, "I wouldn't remember one
single fact." Klaus, the middle
Baudelaire, had read more books than just
about anyone his own age, which was almost
thirteen. At many crucial moments, his
sisters had relied on him to remember a
helpful fact from a book he had read years
before.
"Krechin!" Sunny said. Sunny, the
youngest Baudelaire, was a baby scarcely
larger than a watermelon. Like many
infants, Sunny often said words that were
difficult to understand, like "Krechin!"
which meant something along the lines of
"And if I used my four big teeth to bite
something as sloppily, I wouldn't even
leave one toothmark!"
Violet moved the paper closer to one of
the reading lamps Mr. Poe had in his
office, and began to count the errors that
had appeared in the few sentences she had
read. "For one thing," she said, "the
Quagmires aren't twins. They're triplets.
The fact that their brother perished in
the fire that killed their parents doesn't
change their birth identity."
"Of course it doesn't," Klaus agreed.
"And they were kidnapped by Count Olaf,
not Omar. It's difficult enough that Olaf
is always in disguise, but now the
newspaper has disguised his name,
too."
"Em!" Sunny added, and her siblings
nodded. The youngest Baudelaire was
talking about the part of the article that
mentioned Esme Squalor. Esme and her
husband, Jerome, had recently been the
Baudelaires' guardians, and the children
had seen with their own eyes that Esme had
not been kidnapped by Count Olaf. Esme had
secretly helped Olaf with his evil scheme,
and had escaped with him at the last
minute.
"And ëfor reasons unknown' is the
biggest mistake of all," Violet said
glumly. "The reasons aren't unknown. We
know them. We know the reasons Esme, Count
Olaf, and all of Olaf's associates have
done so many terrible things. It's because
they're terrible people." Violet put down
The Daily Punctilio, looked around Mr.
Poe's office, and joined her siblings in a
sad, deep sigh. The Baudelaire orphans
were sighing not only for the things they
had read, but for the things they hadn't
read. The article had not mentioned that
both the Quagmires and the Baudelaires had
lost their parents in terrible fires, and
that both sets of parents had left
enormous fortunes behind, and that Count
Olaf had cooked up all of his evil plans
just to get ahold of these fortunes for
himself...
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