"Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (All the Wrong Questions) (16 page)
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Authors: Lemony Snicket
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction / Juvenile Fiction - Social Issues - Adolescence, #Juvenile Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Juvenile Fiction / Family / General
“So the butler did it?” asked Hector. It was
his twelfth birthday. If there are any readers of this account, and I have no reason to believe there are, I hope you do not spend your twelfth birthday eating dusty peanuts in the lobby of the Lost Arms with Prosper Lost across the room, keeping watch. Most people deserve a party.
“Hangfire wasn’t really a butler,” I told my associate, “and he didn’t really commit the crime. When his telegram to the Mallahans went
unanswered, he hired Dame Sally Murphy to pretend to be Mrs. Murphy Sallis. He pretended to be her butler to keep an eye on her while she hired us to steal the Bombinating Beast.”
Hector frowned thoughtfully. “And Hangfire convinced that girl to try to steal it, too?”
“Yes. He told Ellington Feint that she would never see her father again if she didn’t help him. She broke into Handkerchief Heights and tried to think of a way to steal the statue, but she got lucky when I fell into her life holding it. When the police knocked on the door, she wrapped up the statue and a bag of coffee to fool me into thinking I was mailing the Bombinating Beast to Theodora at the Lost Arms. Ellington had the real statue and mailed it to herself at Black Cat Coffee, but I learned of the trickery and got there before she did. Then she switched it again, probably when I was sitting next to her in the Mitchums’ station wagon, and ran off with it. And now we can’t find her.”
“Do you think she gave the statue to Hangfire?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not.”
“It seems like an awful lot of work just to get a little statue,” he said, “particularly one nobody else was interested in. What does he want it for, anyway?”
I looked around the lobby of the Lost Arms. Three days had passed, and they hadn’t passed easily. I had spent my time asking these same questions myself while I read in the library or sat at the counter of Black Cat Coffee, listening to the player piano and hoping Ellington Feint might walk in the door. A mystery is solved with a story, and the story starts with a clue. I had thought the clue was the Bombinating Beast, but lately I had been thinking that the clue was something else. I thought perhaps it was the young girl looking for her father with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes and an old-fashioned record player with some tunes that wouldn’t leave my head. I had
no one to share any of these tunes or thoughts, at least until Hector dropped into town for the afternoon. “I don’t know,” I told him. “There’s a mystery to the Bombinating Beast, and to Hangfire, that I haven’t solved yet.”
“And how much of this is going into your official report?” he asked me.
“Practically none of it,” I replied. “As far as my chaperone is concerned, the case is closed. I simply wrote that our client hired us to discreetly find a stolen item and that both the item and the client have disappeared.”
“That’s not going to look good on your permanent record, Snicket.”
“I don’t care about my permanent record,” I said. “I have a job to do.”
Hector sighed and leaned back against the dirty sofa. “You’re worrying everyone, Snicket. Monty’s worried. Haruki’s worried. This plan to choose the worst chaperone so you can secretly—”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said stiffly.
“Did you know that two other chaperones were thinking of drugging you so you’d miss your appointment?”
“They tried,” I told him. The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationery Shop seemed years ago.
“I bet you wish they’d succeeded. Then you’d be someone else’s apprentice instead. Is Theodora as bad as they say?”
“She’s upstairs taking a nap,” I said, and Hector looked at his watch and shook his head. He was quiet for a moment, and then, with a quick and careful glance at Prosper Lost, took off his jacket and handed it to me.
“Sewn into the lining is the map of the city’s waterworks,” he said. “Don’t lose it. It was very difficult to get hold of.”
“Thank you, Hector. I appreciate it.”
“I can’t see it doing you any good way out
here,” Hector said. “It took me all day to get here from the city. This is a strange place, Snicket. Those strange inkwells, that shimmering forest of seaweed, the masks you need to wear if that bell rings—something seems very wrong in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. I bet there’s not a single decent Mexican restaurant.”
“There’s a good library,” I said, “and a fine journalist, and several interesting people. That’s more than most places have.”
“Don’t get interested in that Ellington person,” Hector said. “She’s a liar and a thief.”
“She’s just trying to help her father,” I said, “and I promised to help her.”
Hector sighed and stood up to leave. “You’re in a real fix, Snicket. Good luck.”
“Will you be able to make your way back?” I said. “I know of a good taxi service.”
“Thank you, but I have my own transportation.”
“Another ballooning project?” I asked him.
Hector nodded. “My chaperone has given me an assignment to take some aerial photographs of a distant part of the sea. Something suspicious has been spotted.”
“So you’re not going back to the city?”
“Not for months,” Hector said. “Why?”
“No reason,” I said, and shrugged my shoulders. I felt the packet inside my own jacket. I had spent the better part of the morning sewing it into the lining. Sewing is a prickly and boring business. Ellington Feint, with her long, careful fingers, would have done a better job of it. But it would be some time before I saw her again, and right now there was no use in giving my jacket to Hector, who would not return to the city in time.
“Good-bye, Snicket,” Hector said. “Be careful. Please tell your replacement in the city that they’ll have to take the long way round to the museum. If they tunnel into the wrong waterway, they’ll both be drowned.”
“There’s no replacement,” I said.
“So you’re going to sneak out of town and join her?”
I shook my head. “I’m stuck here in Stain’d-by-the-Sea for the duration.”
Hector’s eyes widened. “You can’t let her do this alone,” he said, louder than he meant to say it. Prosper Lost blinked at us curiously and stepped out from behind his desk.
“What choice do I have?” I whispered to Hector.
“She’s not just your associate, Snicket,” he whispered back, putting on his hat. “She’s your sister.”
“I know that,” I said sharply, but he scowled and shook his head and went out the door. I know she’s my sister, I wanted to shout after him. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know I’m putting my own sister in danger?
“Happy birthday,” I said instead, but Hector
didn’t stop. It is possible that he was walking even faster. By now Prosper Lost was standing right beside me, and we both watched Hector disappear down the dark street.
“Fight with your friend?” Prosper Lost asked me, as if it were his business.
“It wasn’t a fight,” I said. “I just said the wrong thing.”
Lost gave me one of his thin smiles. “Everybody does something wrong at one time or another.”
It was true. Everybody does something wrong at one time or another. It was true, but I didn’t like it. I nodded at him and turned away. The statue of the woman looked like she wanted to give me a shrug, if only she had arms. I shrugged back and thought about the other statue, the Bombinating Beast, and the villain who wanted to get hold of it. I thought of the fading town and the vanished sea. I thought of Ellington’s green eyes and the question-mark
eyebrows that hovered over them. It wasn’t just one time or another. I had been wrong over and over and over again, wrong every time about every clue to the dark and inky mystery hanging over me and everybody else. It rang like a bell in my head—wrong, wrong, wrong. I was wrong, I thought, but maybe if I stayed in this town long enough, I could make everything right.
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Contents
Text Copyright © 2012 by Lemony Snicket
Art Copyright © 2012 by Seth
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Jacket art © 2012 Seth
Jacket design by Gail Doobinin
Jacket © 2012 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-22502-1