It is, as you know, very, very rude and usually unnecessary to use profanity, but the Baudelaire orphans were too terrified to point this out to Stephano. Taking a last look at their poor Uncle Monty, the three children followed Stephano to the door of the Reptile Room to get in the damn jeep. To add insult to injury—a phrase which here means “forcing somebody to do an unpleasant task when they’re already very upset”—Stephano forced Violet to carry his suitcase out of the house, but she was too lost in her own thoughts to care. She was remembering the last conversation she and her siblings had had with Uncle Monty, and thinking with a cold rush of shame that it hadn’t really been a conversation at all. You will recall, of course, that on the ride home from seeing Zombies in the Snow, the children had been so worried about Stephano that they hadn’t said a word to Uncle Monty, and that when the jeep had arrived at the house, the Baudelaire orphans had dashed upstairs to hash out the situation, without even saying good night to the man who now lay dead under a sheet in the Reptile Room. As the youngsters reached the jeep, Violet tried to remember if they had even thanked him for taking them to the movies, but the night was all a blur. She thought that she, Klaus, and Sunny had probably said “Thank you, Uncle Monty,”

when they were standing together at the ticket booth, but she couldn’t be sure.

Stephano opened the door of the jeep and gestured with the knife, ushering Klaus and Sunny into the tiny backseat and Violet, the black suitcase heavy on her lap, into the front seat beside him. The orphans had a brief hope that the engine would not start when Stephano turned the key in the ignition, but this was a futile hope.

Uncle Monty took good care of his jeep, and it started right up.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked behind them as Stephano began to drive alongside the snake-shaped hedges. At the sight of the Reptile Room, which Uncle Monty had filled so carefully with his specimens and in which he was now a sort of specimen himself, the weight of the Baudelaires’ despair was too much for them and they quietly began to cry.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one.