Toast

[hookhandedgirl]

that's what i meant. the other ones didn't need to be covered up.

[Dante]

Actually, he would, to an extent, if he didn't want to be arrested / tried / put in prison.

[Ennui]

The police may well be in his pocket anyway, though, or hopelessly confused and incompetent. He's not going to be captured by ordinary law enforcers.

[Dante]

He can't have the entire world's police forces in his pay, or incredibly stupid. He's going to be covering up his actions to some extent. I agree that he's clever, but not so brilliant that he can just walk around undisguised, murder someone, and then escape 100% of the time.

All I'm saying is that he doesn't stroll around calling himself Count Olaf, and killing people in broad daylight. He uses aliases and disguises, as seen in the books. That's covering up. Why does he burn down so many buildings? In TSS, it sounded like one of his (and the sinister duo's) main motivations was to destroy any incriminating evidence. That's covering up.

[Ennui]

As well as part of the fun. But yes, I agree.

As to his cleverness...that's a subject that deserves a whole other topic. In relative terms, his villainy seems to be being shown as increasingly inept...

[Antenora]

I agree that Olaf burns down buildings to destroy evidence that could incriminate him, as well as to make the murders less obvious. As stupid as the police generally are, Olaf still can't risk getting caught by being blatantly obvious.

Some of his plans, though, are ridiculously elaborate, such as the plot to "cranioectomize" Violet.

[SF]

What if Olaf (or one of his troupe) broke into the house.... tied up to Baudelaire parents... not harming them but just disabling them... then left.. and somehow started the fire**(this is complete theory... no backup)I dont believe that Olaf would've killed them, and then started the fire.... why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone--Fire

[Antenora]

I think Olaf just started the fire and gotten it over with, although that may not be the case as straightforwardness isn't really his thing. He probably made sure that the parents would find it hard to escape, perhaps locking the doors.

[Shelly]

yeah, but the Baudelaires are remembering this time, it didn't cause the fire!

[viob]

asoueaddict said:

Well I've had a theory that if Beatrice is the mother, she could've escaped but then been killed in the afternoon (since Lemony said she perished one afternoon, but the Baudelaire parents supposedly died in the morning). She could've escaped an disappeared, trying to get back to her family, but the someone came along and killed her...

Beatrice perished one afternoon nearly 20 years before the Baudelaires went to the Squalors on a trip up mount Fraght with some friends. she was picked up by a bird. Mrs. Baudelaire did not perish on top of mount Fraught, she may not even be dead at all. She is not Beatrice.

[Dante]

Interesting. What tells you that she died twenty years before the mountain-climbing trip?

[Antenora]

I think she might mean that Beatrice died on the mountain-climbing trip, which may have been around 20 years ago.

[Dante]

Oh, I see. That's a confusing and gramatically incorrect way of wording it.

Still, the evidence in that particular field is quite ambiguous - and while I don't usually like to nitpick, Jerome hadn't married Esmé at the time, so it would be just him with the Baudelaires (and anyone else who went).

It also seems not very dramatic for her to have died on that occasion, especially since we actually know about it.

[PJ]

Well, Lemony says something like "I have seen many Amazing things.....and I have seen the woman I love be swooped off her feet by a bird...."
Somehow, this does not fit the atmosphere if Beatrice died in this incident. Otherwise Lemony would seem depressed, and wouldn't use it as an example of something amazing.
Or, at least, I think so. This all comes back to my theory that she's still alive during the series.

[Antenora]

I also suspect that Beatrice is currently alive and will die at the end of the series(which Lemony will then actually write and publish). Some have used the "death swooped down like a bat" dedication in TMM to support the theory that Beatrice was killed by the eagle, but I don't think so myself. Beatrice probably survived that incident, perhaps being rescued by Lemony. And as Dante said, such a death wouldn't be very dramatic, because we already know about this incident, detracting from the mystery.