– Your Aunt Josephine
"Oh no," Klaus said quietly when he was finished reading. He turned the piece of paper over and over as if he had read it incorrectly, as if it said something different. "Oh no," he said again, so faintly that it was as if he didn't even know he was speaking out loud.
Without a word Violet opened the door to the library, and the Baudelaires took a step inside and found themselves shivering. The room was freezing cold, and after one glance the orphans knew why. The Wide Window had shattered. Except for a few shards that still stuck to the window frame, the enormous pane of glass was gone, leaving a vacant hole that looked out into the still blackness of the night.
The cold night air rushed through the hole, rattling the bookshelves and making the children shiver up against one another, but despite the cold the orphans walked carefully to the empty space where the window had been, and looked down. The night was so black that it seemed as if there was absolutely nothing beyond the window. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny stood there for a moment and remembered the fear they had felt, just a few days ago, when they were standing in this very same spot. They knew now that their fear had been rational.
Huddling together, looking down into the blackness, the Baudelaires knew that their plan to keep a careful watch had come too late. They had locked the barn door, but poor Aunt Josephine was already gone.
CHAPTER Five
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny-
By the time you read this note, my life will be at it's end. My heart is as cold as ike and I find life inbearable. I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger, or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt, but please know that I am much happier this way. As my last will and testament, I leave you three in the care of Captain Sham, a kind and honorable men. Please think of me kindly even though I'd done this terrible thing.
– Your Aunt Josephine
"Stop it!" Violet cried. "Stop reading it out loud, Klaus! We already know what it says."
"I just can't believe it," Klaus said, turning the paper around for the umpteenth time. The Baudelaire orphans were sitting glumly around the dining-room table with the cold lime stew in bowls and dread in their hearts. Violet had called Mr. Poe and told him what had happened, and the Baudelaires, too anxious to sleep, had stayed up the whole night waiting for him to arrive on the first Fickle Ferry of the day. The candles were almost completely burned down, and Klaus had to lean forward to read Josephine's note. "There's something funny about this note, but I can't put my finger on it."
"How can you say such a thing?" Violet asked. "Aunt Josephine has thrown herself out of the window. There's nothing funny about it at all."
"Not funny as in a funny joke," Klaus said. "Funny as in a funny smell. Why, in the very first sentence she says 'my life will be at it's end.'"
"And now it is," Violet said, shuddering.
"That's not what I mean," Klaus said impatiently. "She uses it's, I-T-apostrophe-S, which always means 'it is.' But you wouldn't say 'my life will be at it is end.' She means I-T-S, 'belonging to it.'" He picked up Captain Sham's business card, which was still lying on the table. "Remember when she saw this card? 'Every boat has it's own sail.' She said it was a serious grammatical error."
"Who cares about grammatical errors," Violet asked, "when Aunt Josephine has jumped out the window?"
"But Aunt Josephine would have cared,"
Klaus pointed out. "That's what she cared about most: grammar. Remember, she said it was the greatest joy in life."
"Well, it wasn't enough," Violet said sadly. "No matter how much she liked grammar, it says she found her life unbearable."
"But that's another error in the note," Klaus said. "It doesn't say unbearable, with a U. It says inbearable, with an I."
"You are being unbearable, with a U," Violet cried.
"And you are being stupid, with an S," Klaus snapped.
"Aget!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "Please stop fighting!" Violet and Klaus looked at their baby sister and then at one another. Oftentimes, when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.
"I'm sorry, Klaus," Violet said meekly. "You're not unbearable. Our situation is unbearable."
"I know," Klaus said miserably. "I'm sorry, too. You're not stupid, Violet. You're very clever. In fact, I hope you're clever enough to get us out of this situation. Aunt Josephine has jumped out the window and left us in the care of Captain Sham, and I don't know what we can do about it."
"Well, Mr. Poe is on his way," Violet said. "He said on the phone that he would be here first thing in the morning, so we don't have long to wait. Maybe Mr. Poe can be of some help."
"I guess so," Klaus said, but he and his sisters looked at one another and sighed. They knew that the chances of Mr. Poe being of much help were rather slim. When the Baudelaires lived with Count Olaf, Mr. Poe was not helpful when the children told him about Count Olaf's cruelty. When the Baudelaires lived with Uncle Monty, Mr. Poe was not helpful when the children told him about Count Olaf's treachery. It seemed clear that Mr. Poe would not be of any help in this situation, either.
One of the candles burned out in a small puff of smoke, and the children sank down lower in their chairs. You probably know of a plant called the Venus flytrap, which grows in the tropics. The top of the plant is shaped like an open mouth, with toothlike spines around the edges. When a fly, attracted by the smell of the flower, lands on the Venus flytrap, the mouth of the plant begins to close, trapping the fly. The terrified fly buzzes around the closed mouth of the plant, but there is nothing it can do, and the plant slowly, slowly, dissolves the fly into nothing. As the darkness of the house closed in around them, the Baudelaire youngsters felt like the fly in this situation. It was as if the disastrous fire that took the lives of their parents had been the beginning of a trap, and they hadn't even known it. They buzzed from place to place-Count Olaf's house in the city, Uncle Monty's home in the country, and now, Aunt Josephine's house overlooking the lake-but their own misfortune always closed around them, tighter and tighter, and it seemed to the three siblings that before too long they would dissolve away to nothing.
"We could rip up the note," Klaus said finally. "Then Mr. Poe wouldn't know about Aunt Josephine's wishes, and we wouldn't end up with Captain Sham."
"But I already told Mr. Poe that Aunt Josephine left a note," Violet said.
"Well, we could do a forgery," Klaus said, using a word which here means "write something yourself and pretend somebody else wrote it." "We'll write everything she wrote, but we'll leave out the part about Captain Sham."
"Aha!" Sunny shrieked. This word was a favorite of Sunny's, and unlike most of her words, it needed no translation. What Sunny meant was "Aha!", an expression of discovery.
"Of course!" Violet cried. "That's what Captain Sham did! He wrote this letter, not Aunt Josephine!"
Behind his glasses, Klaus's eyes lit up. "That explains it's!"
"That explains inbearable!" Violet said.
"Leep!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "Captain Sham threw Aunt Josephine out the window and then wrote this note to hide his crime."