When Did You See Her Last

by Lemony Snicket

  “Now look here, Snicket,” Harvey Mitchum said to me. “We’re doing this by the book. Polly Partial said a boy about your age stole two honeydew melons from her store. Mimi is bringing her here now to identify you from a lineup, which is a police term for people lined up.” He stomped his way to a drawer and pulled out three dirty caps and three large squares of cardboard with loops of string stapled to them. He frowned and pointed me toward a blank and dirty wall. “Go stand over there,” he barked, “and put these on.”

  He handed me a cap and a cardboard square. The cap advertised the Stain’d-by-the-Sea Sea Stains, a sports team that no longer existed, and the cardboard square turned out to be a sign with the number 1 scrawled on it. “Son,” he said to Stew, “would you please do me a favor and stand next to the boy we just arrested?”

  Stew turned around so his father couldn’t see him sneering at me, and then stood next to me while his father hung a cap and a sign on him. Stew’s cap was the same. His sign read B.

  “We need a third person,” Officer Mitchum muttered, and cast his eyes around the room. He stopped at Moxie, who was already typing into her typewriter. “Young lady,” he said, “I need your help.”

  “Of course, Officer,” she said.

  “Please help me move that small file cabinet so it’s next to those two boys,” Harvey Mitchum said, and together the police officer and the journalist dragged the file cabinet until it was standing in line with Stew and me. The officer nodded at his handiwork and balanced a cap and a sign on top of the cabinet. The cabinet’s sign was scrawled with a simple star, the sort a teacher writes at the top of a piece of homework to indicate that you’ve either done the assignment well or she hasn’t read it carefully.

  The three of us stood there for a minute. I don’t know what Stew was thinking, and the filing cabinet wasn’t thinking anything. But I was thinking, is this the world? Is this really the place in which you’ve ended up, Snicket? It was a question that struck me, as it might strike you, when something ridiculous was going on, or something sad. I wondered if this was really where I should be, or if there was another world someplace, less ridiculous and less sad. But I never knew the answer to the question. Perhaps I had been in another world before I was born, and did not remember it, or perhaps I would see another world when I died, which I was in no hurry to do. In the meantime I knew only the world I was in. In the meantime I was stuck in this police station, doing something so ridiculous it felt sad, and feeling so sad that it was ridiculous. The world of the police station, the world of Stain’d-by-the-Sea and all of the wrong questions I was asking, was the only world I could see.

  “Close your eyes,” Harvey Mitchum said. “Close your eyes until I tell you different.”

  I closed my eyes and heard the shuffle of two people entering the police station. “Here we are, Ms. Partial,” Mimi Mitchum said. “Take a good look at this lineup we have for you.”

  “Is one of them the thief?”

  “That’s for you to tell us, ma’am. Remember, you can see everyone in the lineup, but they cannot see you. Now then, do you recognize any of these three individuals? Is the thief who robbed your store number 1, number B, or number Star?”

  There was a small, busy silence as Polly Partial looked us over. Even Moxie paused in her typing.

  “Number B,” she said finally. “Yes, it’s number B. That’s the thief!”

  I heard Harvey Mitchum take a deep breath. “How dare you!” he thundered when it was done. “Number B is my boy, Stew. He couldn’t have taken those honeydews. He has been with me all day long, and he never eats fresh fruit or vegetables.”

  “I don’t like how they taste,” explained Stew, next to me.

  “And you don’t have to, my darling,” Mimi Mitchum cooed.

  “Number B is the only one I recognize,” the grocer insisted. “I would swear on my mother’s grave, if only she were dead.”

  “We’re very grateful for your help, Ms. Partial,” Harvey Mitchum said in an ungrateful voice. “My wife will drive you back to your store.”

  “Why should I have to drive her?” asked the female Officer Mitchum. “Why don’t you drive for a change?”

  “Because you have the keys to the car, Mimi.”

  “So now I have to drive and hold the keys to the car? Why don’t you just put your feet up on the desk as usual, if I’m doing all the work of the Stain’d-by-the-Sea police force?”

  “I don’t put my feet up on the desk!”

  “Of course you do! You take them down when I walk into the station, but you can’t fool me, Harvey. I have eyes like an ostrich.”

  “Ostriches don’t have particularly good eyes. I think you mean an eagle.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean!”

  “Well, don’t tell me you’re an ostrich when you’re really an eagle!”

  “I’m a woman, Harvey. Don’t call me a bird, you imbecile!”

  “Don’t call me an imbecile, you fool!”

  “Don’t call me a fool, you numbskull!”

  “Never mind,” Polly Partial said. “I’d rather walk back to my supermarket. Good day, Officers.”

  The Officers Mitchum muttered something I could not hear over the sound of Moxie’s typewriter, and then I heard Ms. Partial’s footsteps heading out the door and down the stairs. “You can open your eyes now, son,” Harvey Mitchum said with a sigh. “You too, Snicket.”

  Apparently, the file cabinet had to keep its eyes closed. I removed my hat and my sign and handed them back to the officer.

  “I still think you had something to do with this crime,” he said, “but I have no proof.”

  “Her eyesight might be bad,” his wife said. “Polly Partial is no spring chicken.”

  “I’d call her an autumn chicken,” Harvey Mitchum agreed, “or even a winter chicken. She couldn’t recognize a lampshade if I put it on her head.”

  “It might be her eyesight,” I said, “or it might be that she sees so many people come in and out of her store that she can’t tell them apart. The point is that she’s not a reliable witness.”

  “You’re right,” Harvey Mitchum admitted, and sat down at one of the desks. “Well, at least we solved one crime today. That’s not bad.”

  “True,” Mimi Mitchum agreed. “We did manage to close the Knight case.” She took a handkerchief out of her pocket, licked one corner of it, and tried to rub some dirt off Stew’s squirming face. Moxie and I shared a look.

  “That missing girl?” I asked.

  “Miss Knight is not missing,” Harvey said, and put his feet up on the desk. “We noticed the posters around town and wondered why nobody had called us, but we ran into your associate Theodora and she told us that there was no crime. Miss Knight was seen running away to join the circus.”

  “The person who saw her couldn’t recognize a lampshade if I put it on her head.”

  Mimi looked sharply at Harvey and pushed his feet off the desk before looking just as sharply at me. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  I looked over at Moxie, and the journalist tipped her hat at me and gave me a little shrug. I knew what the shrug meant. It meant that the Officers Mitchum were not good police officers but they were good people. They would try to help someone in trouble. They would fail, but at least they would try, even if the trouble was only a couple of stolen melons that nobody should eat. Cleo Knight was probably in much worse trouble, and so I should tell them what I knew, even if I thought they would be of little assistance. That was a lot to put into a shrug, but it is like that with good journalists. It is like that with good friends.

  “Polly Partial saw somebody buying cereal and getting into a cab, but it wasn’t Cleo Knight. Ms. Partial didn’t recognize me when I got a haircut, and she couldn’t tell your son from a file cabinet.”

  Stew was sticking his tongue out at me, but his parents were listening closely. “Then where is the Knight girl?” Mimi asked.

  “There are two people who might know,” I said. “One i
s Jake Hix, who works at Hungry’s. He saw her that morning, too, and his story makes sense so far. The other is Dr. Flammarion.”

  Harvey Mitchum frowned and put his feet up again. “Flammarion?”

  “The Knights hired him as their personal apothecary. He’s injected the Knights with so much laudanum they’re scarcely aware their daughter is missing.”

  “So what?” Mimi said. “The Knight family’s medical care is their own business, and if their spoiled teenage daughter wants to join the circus, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “She’s a brilliant chemist, not a spoiled teenager,” I said. “If she’d run away, she would have left a note for everyone in that household who loved her.”

  “Maybe,” Harvey said.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “And maybe the law ought to investigate a missing girl.”

  “How can we do that?”

  “You could get the idea to go ask Dr. Flammarion some tough questions about Cleo Knight’s disappearance.”

  Mimi stood up straight and pushed her husband’s feet off the desk again. “I’ve just had an idea,” she said. “Let’s go ask Dr. Flammarion some questions about Cleo Knight’s disappearance.”

  “Some tough questions,” her husband agreed.

  “Of course the questions will be tough, Harvey. What did you think I meant—go ask him some easy questions?”

  “How should I know what you mean? You talk nonsense half the time.”

  “Well, you talk nonsense two-thirds of the time.”

  “There’s no way you can calculate something like that.”

  “Can we go with you, Officers?” Moxie asked, snapping her typewriter shut.

  “Absolutely not,” Harvey Mitchum said. “Stay away from this case. That goes for you too, Snicket. I appreciate your bringing this matter to our attention, but from now on this investigation will be carried out in an orderly and mature way. Stewart, I’ll need you to make your siren noise.”

  “Of course, Daddy dear,” Stew said, and we all walked out of the station. Mimi Mitchum shut and locked the door, and Stew took the opportunity to extend his foot in hopes of tripping me as we walked down the stairs. Moxie had seen this trick before, and swung her typewriter low and hard against Stew’s knee. He howled loudly. She apologized sweetly. He was still howling when the Mitchums led him across the lawn.

  “That was a nice trick, Moxie,” I said, “with the typewriter.”

  “So was yours,” she said, “with the haircut. Are you really going to stay away from this case?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “It’s my job to find Cleo Knight.”

  “What is this job, exactly?” she asked. “Who do you work for? Where did you come from? How long will you stay? When will you leave? Why are you investigating things in this town?”

  “It’s a complicated story,” I said.

  “I have time and I have a typewriter,” Moxie said. “Tell me the whole thing.”

  I took a deep breath of fresh air. I thought of my sister, who was probably deep underground, far from even the smallest breeze. “In my line of work,” I said, “people who learn the whole thing tend to end up in grave danger. I don’t want to lead you into the same predicament.”

  Moxie cocked her head at me, and her brown hat cocked along with her. “Then where are you going to lead me, Lemony Snicket?” she asked.

  “Not far,” I said, and I walked to the other side of the building to the library door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A library tends to look like the problem you’re using it to solve. The library of Stain’d-by-the-Sea had never looked so big and confusing to me. The books and shelves seemed to be in the middle of an argument nobody was winning.

  “Apologies for the mess.” It was the deep voice of Dashiell Qwerty, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. His desk was towered with books, with a few of his eternal enemies—a phrase which here means “moths”—fluttering just out of the reach of his checkered handkerchief. “We’ve had some recent concerns, so the library is taking some precautionary measures.”

  “What concerns?” Moxie asked, already opening her typewriter. “What measures?”

  Qwerty moved a few books aside so he could face us. He called himself a sub-librarian, but I considered him to be not only a proper librarian but a good and proper librarian. He was dressed in his usual leather jacket decorated with pieces of metal, and his hair as usual looked frightened of it. “A few books have gone missing,” he said, “and there have been some threats.”

  “Who made the threats?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said. “In any case, I’m completely reorganizing the shelves, and in a few days a sprinkler system will be installed so we don’t have to worry about fire. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good book to read, allow me to recommend a book I like called Despair. The plot concerns two people who do not look at all alike but nevertheless hatch a nefarious plan.”

  “It sounds interesting,” I said, “although my associate and I have a number of things to research.”

  Qwerty gave me a familiar smile and made a wide gesture with his hand and the sleeve of his leather jacket. I liked the gesture. It was not like Theodora’s dramatic gestures, which seemed designed to make you look at her. This was a gesture designed to make you look around the library, and I liked what he always said when the gesture was through. “Make yourself at home,” he said, and Moxie and I shared a smile and thanked him and headed off down the crowded aisles.

  “So?” she said, when we were out of earshot.

  “So this is where I do my research.”

  “Yes, but what are we researching?”

  “Dr. Flammarion is obviously up to something,” I said, “and we need to find out what it is.”

  “There’s not going to be a book on Dr. Flammarion,” Moxie said.

  “No,” I said, “but there might be one about Colonel Colophon.”

  “What does he have to do with all this?”

  “I wish I knew,” I admitted. “He was Ingrid Nummet Knight’s business partner, and Dr. Flammarion works at the clinic where the colonel lives. I also want to do some research on chemistry. Dr. Flammarion works with laudanum, and Cleo Knight was working with invisible ink. Maybe there’s another connection there.”

  “I’ll tackle Colonel Colophon, and you take chemistry. Fair?”

  “Fair.”

  “And Snicket?”

  “Yes, Moxie?”

  “Do you really consider me an associate?”

  “Certainly.”

  She smiled the way people smile when they are trying to stop smiling. “So we’re solving this case together?”

  “I told you before I don’t want to lead you into danger,” I said. “We don’t know what happened to Cleo Knight.”

  “If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me,” Moxie said firmly.

  “I was trained for this sort of thing,” I said. “It was part of my education.”

  “Is Theodora part of this education?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s my associate, too.”

  “The same Theodora who made you steal the Bombinating Beast from me? The same Theodora who thinks that no crime was committed in this case?” The journalist put down her typewriter on one of the library’s desks. “I might be a better associate than your associate.”

  Moxie Mallahan was reminding me of me. I was known for arguing with my teachers until they became so flustered they could think of only one thing to say to me. It was an unfair thing, the thing they said, but I was almost thirteen. I was used to unfair things. “Let’s get to work,” I told her.

  Moxie sighed and walked away from me, toward the section of the library dedicated to military history. I headed toward Science, hoping that the books I was looking for would be on the shelves and not in the messy stacks that clogged the aisles. To get to the Science Section, I had to walk through Fiction, where there was a gap, three books wide, blank and obvious like a missing tooth. It was
my fault. I had found it necessary to remove three books from the library without checking them out, and now the books were in Hangfire’s possession. They were good books, and now nobody could check them out. Don’t mope about it, Snicket. There’s nothing you can do.

  The Science Section was in no order whatsoever, so chemistry books were piled with biology books stacked with botany books leaned up against endocrinology. I sighed, but it didn’t get any better. The room was quiet. I knelt on the ground and began to look through everything. There wasn’t a book called Laudanum or a book called Invisible Ink or a book called Laudanum and Invisible Ink or a book called The Case of Cleo Knight’s Disappearance Solved in a Book So Lemony Snicket Doesn’t Have to Do It Himself. I did find a book about chemistry, but I didn’t want to read it. It was as big as a cake and it was called Chemistry. It had no index, so there was no way to look in the back of the book to see where the sections on laudanum were. You had to stumble on them. I wanted to stumble on whoever had made the decision not to put an index in the back of Chemistry. I lugged it to a table and started reading.

  Chemistry is a branch of science dealing with the basic elementary substances of which all bodies and matter are composed, and the laws that regulate the combination of these elements when forming compounds, and the phenomena that occur when such bodies are exposed to differing physical conditions and environments. I closed the book. I had read enough. Cleo Knight would die peacefully in her sleep at age 102, surrounded by her great-grandchildren, before this book would help me with the case.

  I allowed myself a moment of melancholy instead. It was late afternoon. Just a moment, I told myself. Just one moment of melancholy. I thought of my sister, in a tunnel underneath the city. It would be dark there, although she would likely have a lantern or a torch. She would frown in the way she does when she is concentrating very hard. She is measuring her steps, making sure that she ends up directly under the Museum of Items. Then I thought of my parents. I thought of how they looked in the shade of a tall tree, one long-ago afternoon. The wind was blowing hard, and we were foolishly hiking. The wind caught a heavy branch of a tree and sent it tumbling down. You could hear it coming, thrashing through the leaves, for what seemed like a long time. My mother leapt—a great, long, surprising leap—and blocked the branch with her arms, sending it rolling into the underbrush. I remembered the sound. She had been just in time. “We take care of our own,” my mother said, while my sister and my brother and I all stood gaping at the branch that would have ruined our day. “We Snickets take care of our own.”