"The Penultimate Peril: Part Two" Quiz

Answer: Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department

At an opera some time ago, Esme Squalor and Kit Snicket watched from a balcony sea while drinking tea (with sugar from the Sugar Bowl, of course). Though Esme tried to speak to Lemony, it was clear that he wasn't listening; when Beatrice was on stage, he only had ears for her. Lemony, writing for 'The Daily Punctilio', was prepared to write his review then and there, but a short intermission from the Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department about fire safety interrupted the moment. As Beatrice headed to the balcony, the Chief thanked his son, Olaf, for being in attendance with them all.

"The past haunts the present," according to Lemony Snicket, "the same way a ghost haunts an opera house, which is coincdentally the same way a murder of crows may fly over a hotel." At the Hotel Denouement, Esme and Carmelita scope out the murder of crows and, using binoculars, find the one with the Sugar Bowl. Striking it with a slingshot, they manage to score a direct hit, sending the bird into the sticky paper on the side of the building and the Sugar Bowl tumbling into the laundry room.

Answer: No

Lemony Snicket introduces himself to the children and gives them the quick option of getting into his cab and living their life on the lam. With the murder of Dewey Denouement being not-quite-witnessed by the guests of the hotel, the Baudelaires really only have the one option if they wish to evade capture. They do, however, want to see Count Olaf behind bars, and the only way they can do that is if they stay and trust Justice Strauss to bring him to justice. When they turn away, their choice is made for them; Lemony has to remain on the lam so he takes his family taxi and leaves.

Justice manages to calm the hotel guests, insisting that no judgment will be made without a fair trial backed with evidence, and with that she decides to move Count Olaf's trial to the following day-- not Thursday when they expected all of the volunteers to arrive. The matter is, of course, very urgent. On the bright side, Frank Denouement has captured Count Olaf in the gardens and he plans to lock him in a storage closet in the lobby, the location of the next day's trial.

Answer: Blindfolds

Justice Strauss brings the Baudelaires to their room reassures them that all will be fine; the High Court has their best interests at heart and they will do what they set out to by protecting them. The Baudelaires, however, are locked into Room 342-- the Dewey Decimal Number for Criminal Law-- and with that Klaus starts reading any material he can about the court.

In the kitchen, Esme and Carmelita start making sausages with the intent to ruin things. Esme knows that Count Olaf and the Baudelaires are to blame for all that's gone wrong in their lives. Still scorned by Olaf's break-up, she intends to make them sick.

The next morning at 6:00am, the people of the Hotel Denouement prepare for the trial. Mr. Poe comes to escort the children, insisting that they wear blindfolds into the proceedings because justice is blind, even though they all recognize the literal interpretation of the expression makes no sense. And with all of their blindfolds on, it's literally a case of the blind leading the blind to the lobby.

Answer: The upper floors

As everybody takes their seats in the lobby (with great struggle since they're all blindfolded), Justice Strauss announces that they may take off the extra item until the verdict is given; the evidence, after all, needs to be seen to be believed. All rise for the High Court judges as they listen in from the highest point in the lobby (taking their name literally) and they are seated once more. Count Olaf is brought from his storage closet and the trial begins as Justice Strauss brings forth her compiled evidence-- 'The Complete History of Injustice or Odious Lusting After Fortunes'.

The Baudelaires are brought up to the stand first and it takes very little time before Count Olaf speaks out of turn. Fortunately, the orphans are surrounded, as Justice Strauss claims, by friends who've looked out for them all along the way. All they need to do is provide their testimony of events...and they do, explaining the series of unfortunate events-- his crimes-- to the listening crowd. The world won't be safe, they say, until Olaf is behind bars, and they are met with a standing ovation.

Answer: Count Olaf

When the Baudelaires step down from the stand, Justice Strauss announces that while she planned to have further witnesses, the circumstances are such that she plans to simply confer with the High Court and declare a ruling to avoid wasting any further time in wrapping up this series of unfortunate events. Something is amiss, however, and the Baudelaires notice it when they see Count Olaf in a good mood. Though Justice Strauss makes motions to speak to the other judges, Klaus seizes the opportunity to reinforce their argument by asking that Count Olaf take to the stand. As they are acting as their own attorneys, they may question him themselves.

Count Olaf willingly takes a seat and allows the children to question him. He doesn't hold back either, calling out all other Volunteers in the room for their failings. None of what they did, he claims, was able to stop him from executing his plans and they are barely decent. In fact, the Baudelaires set fire to Caligari Carnival; it was them who destroyed Lucky Smells Lumbermill; they held Esme hostage on Mount Fraught. They relied on treachery for survival.

Olaf assures them that there are no noble people in the world, but the Baudelaires insist that their parents were. Olaf, however, takes the time to tell them the truth.

Answer: Crow

Count Olaf tells his tale through someone else by calling Esme Squalor to the stand. He has no questions for he, but he lets the Baudelaires ask all they wish to uncover the unfortunate truth themselves. All the while, Carmelita starts handing out sausages to the crowd.

The children ask about the Sugar Bowl and it leads to the night at the opera when, in the box seats, Beatrice absconded with Esme's sugar bowl, the contents of which (perhaps) were the key to stopping those within V.F.D. who planned to burn it down from within. It led to a fight in the lobby in which Esme and Beatrice faced off with a handful of poisoned darts, and the person caught in the crossfire was none other than the Chief of the Volunteer Fire Department himself, Olaf's father.

The theft led to a murder. The murder led to the schism. It led to rescinded proposals and arsons. Friends became enemies and the Baudelaires became orphans.

Before the story can be finished, however, the crowd starts choking. As it turns out, the crow sausages Esme and Carmelita made weren't all too well-done.

Answer: Justice Strauss

As the crowd settles down from their overly-peppered crow sausages, Justice Strauss has Olaf, Esme, and the Baudelaires return to their seats. Olaf commences a song on the piano, but he's cut off, so he shifts his focus to proclaiming his innocence. It all comes to a note handed over to Justice Strauss who, receiving word from the High Court, is required to as the Baudelaires how they plead; in light of the evidence she has no choice. Thinking on all that has been discussed, they suggest that they're still innocent...enough.

With that, the judges convene and everyone is required to don their blindfolds, but everything goes horribly awry. Risking contempt of court, the Baudelaires remove their blindfolds to discover the Count Olaf has grabbed the harpoon gun and taken Justice Strauss hostage. Above, her High Court judges are none other than the man with a beard and no hair and the woman with hair and no beard, and it is their decision that the orphans are guilty.

In the blindfolded, ensuing chaos, no one is able to catch them as they reach Olaf in the elevator and take it with him to the basement. After all, there's still a Sugar Bowl to retrieve.

Answer: No

Reaching the basement of the Hotel Denouement, Olaf leads his hostage and the children to the laundry room. He has a plan, but it begins with opening the Vernacularly Fastened Door. To get inside, he has to answer three questions and, to Justice Strauss' surprise, the Baudelaires help because, as they claim, there's no help for them. With the High Court judges working on Olaf's side of the schism and everyone noble being unable to succeed, there's no value in the Sugar Bowl, at least not to them. They answer the door's passwords with 'PEPPERMINT', 'POISON DART', and a third phrase, but Klaus quickly admits he only opened the passage because the Sugar Bowl isn't inside; the laundry chute never led to the laundry room and the secret died with Dewey Denouement.

With this information, Olaf vows to kill everyone in the hotel by heading to the roof, grabbing the Medusoid Mycelium, and unleashing it in the lobby. To get away, he plans on leaving on the Carmelita II, waiting on the roof. Violet, knowing that a boat would smash to the ground if tipped over the building, vows to help him-- at least to keep him away from everyone else. Sunny, however, provides the most shocking advice: to burn the Hotel Denouement to the ground. Olaf is quite fond of that idea. He takes bottle of ammonia, all of the evidence against him, and a lighter, and sets the room ablaze.

At the very least, as Violet realizes, people will leave the building and perhaps they won't be around when Olaf unleashes the fungus.

Answer: Out to sea

Heading back into the elevator, the Baudelaires hit the buttons for every floor in an attempt to warn the guests of the encroaching fire. On the first floor, everyone stumbles around in their blindfolds while the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair and no beard praise Olaf for his work (though Olaf tries to pretend it's actually a celebratory barbecue). On the third floor, Mr. Poe and Vice-Principal Remora struggle to understand. On the fourth, Jerome and Babs stay in place to avoid arguing. On the sixth, Carmelita and Esme opt to ignore the children's warnings, but listen to Olaf when he says the Sugar Bowl is in the laundry room.

By the time they all make it to the roof, the fire seems to have started destroying the building's foundation and the way back is unsafe. Justice Strauss tries to convince the Baudelaires that they can turn around, but they know they need to forge ahead, if only to get Count Olaf away, and they construct a drag chute using a shade tent. The children ask Justice to join them, but she refuses to run. She insists she can give them a home and keep them safe, but they apologize and depart, careening over the side of the Hotel Denouement, releasing the chute, and gliding out to sea.

Answer: Lemony Snicket

As the Baudelaires and Count Olaf raise the sail on the Carmelita II and head out to sea, they are both in each others' clutches.

The location of the Sugar Bowl remains a mystery though some may believe it rests in a subbasement of the destroyed Hotel Denouement.

Kit Snicket, who headed to sea, never returned to reunite with her brother. It's uncertain if she encountered the Great Unknown in her voyage.

A small event, Lemony Snicket claims, like a man failing to give three children a ride in his taxi, can ripple and tremble and bring down a building like the Hotel Denouement. When he arrives at the scene of the arson, he finds Justice Strauss mourning their departure. The only thing she has left is their photograph.

On that fateful night at the opera, it was Beatrice who threw the poison dart and started the schism but it was Lemony's idea to steal the Sugar Bowl. While they would separate and he would take the fall for her crimes, he would love her forever. Beatrice, however, would fall in love with another man and have three children and one day they would be orphans.

Lemony would take Justice Strauss' photograph and place it on his wall, and with that he would begin looking for Beatrice's children. One would expect them to be found safe and sound, but that's not how the story goes. They remain missing.