Why exactly did Count Olaf ask Aunt Josephine to do?

[doetwin]

When the Baudelaires find Aunt Josephine in Curdled Cave, she tells them that Count Olaf had threatened to drown her in Lake Lachrymose if she didn't write that suicide note. I took this to mean that Count Olaf to write a suicide note, then go into hiding, so the Baudelaires and Mr. Poe would think she was dead. However, when Count Olaf rescues them from the leaches, he says "I thought you'd done the sensible thing and jumped out the window." and "Faking your own death was pretty clever, but not clever enough.". This implies that Count Olaf had actually instructed Aunt Josephine to kill herself. In other words he had said, "Kill yourself or I'll kill you.". What on earth would have made Olaf think that she was going to kill herself just because he told her too(if that's indeed what he did) and what incentive would she have had to write to note if she was going to die either way?

[Dante]

This is a good question. Maybe he simply told her to write the suicide note and then disappear; the violence of her apparent disappearance misled him into believing, like everyone else, that she really had killed herself. Alternatively, Josephine is so easiliy terrified that it might well have seemed entirely plausible to Olaf that he could convince her to actually commit suicide over the phone, possibly with the threat of a more violent and painful death. Alternatively again, Count Olaf was still partially acting in character as Captain Sham for his own personal amusement. Checking the book, yet another possible reading is that, since Olaf apparently only told Josephine to write a will leaving the children in his care, he actually had a longer game planned involving, perhaps, a false marriage to Josephine or something, and events moved more quickly than he had anticipated. I strongly suspect that it's simply an oversight, though, with one or the other of these sets of lines perhaps a holdover from an earlier draft of the story.

[doetwin]

Feb 17, 2016 3:23:35 GMT -5 Dante said:

This is a good question. Maybe he simply told her to write the suicide note and then disappear; the violence of her apparent disappearance misled him into believing, like everyone else, that she really had killed herself. Alternatively, Josephine is so easiliy terrified that it might well have seemed entirely plausible to Olaf that he could convince her to actually commit suicide over the phone, possibly with the threat of a more violent and painful death. Alternatively again, Count Olaf was still partially acting in character as Captain Sham for his own personal amusement. Checking the book, yet another possible reading is that, since Olaf apparently only told Josephine to write a will leaving the children in his care, he actually had a longer game planned involving, perhaps, a false marriage to Josephine or something, and events moved more quickly than he had anticipated. I strongly suspect that it's simply an oversight, though, with one or the other of these sets of lines perhaps a holdover from an earlier draft of the story.

That's a good theory. I never thought of it. Thank you Dante.