Violet stood up, having heard enough to know she had enough time to go up to Stephano’s room. Quietly, quietly, Violet walked up the staircase and down the hallway toward Stephano’s door, where he had sat holding the knife that fearsome night. When she reached his door, Violet stopped. It was amazing, she thought, how everything having to do with Count Olaf was frightening. He was such a terrible person that merely the sight of his bedroom door could get her heart pounding. Violet found herself half hoping that Stephano would bound up the stairs and stop her, just so she wouldn’t have to open this door and go into the room where he slept. But then Violet thought of her own safety, and the safety of her two siblings. If one’s safety is threatened, one often finds courage one didn’t know one had, and the eldest Baudelaire found she could be brave enough to open the door. Her shoulder still aching from the car collision, Violet turned the brass handle of the door and walked inside.

The room, as Violet suspected, was a dirty mess. The bed was unmade and had cracker crumbs and bits of hair all over it. Discarded newspapers and mail-order catalogs lay on the floor in untidy piles. On top of the dresser was a small assortment of half-empty wine bottles. The closet door was open, revealing a bunch of rusty wire coathangers that shivered in the drafty room. The curtains over the windows were all bunched up and encrusted with something flaky, and as Violet drew closer she realized with faint horror that Stephano had blown his nose on them.

But although it was disgusting, hardened phlegm was not the sort of evidence Violet was hoping for. The eldest Baudelaire orphan stood in the center of the room and surveyed the sticky disorder of the bedroom.

Everything was horrendous, nothing was helpful. Violet rubbed her sore shoulder and remembered when she and her siblings were living with Count Olaf and found themselves locked in his tower room. Although it was frightening to be trapped in his inner sanctum—a phrase which here means “filthy room in which evil plans are devised”—it turned out to be quite useful, because they were able to read up on nuptial law and work their way out of their predicament. But here, in Stephano’s inner sanctum at Uncle Monty’s house, all Violet could find were signs of uncleanliness. Somewhere Stephano must have left a trail of evidence that Violet could find and use to convince Mr. Poe, but where was it? Disheartened—and afraid she had spent too much time in Stephano’s bedroom—Violet went quietly back downstairs.

“No, no, no,” Mr. Poe was saying, when she stopped to listen at the kitchen door again. “Dr. Montgomery can’t drive. He’s dead. There must be a way to do this.”