The Poisonous Plant

[Mally Sebald]

Can we talk about the poisonous plant that mysteriously and somewhat frequently appears in the Rare Edition of TBB? I've seen lots of theories and don't believe any (especially not the Snicket Sleuth's). Why was it stolen? Why was it being arranged in a cardboard vase during the Marvelous Marriage? Where does it end up? Was Mr. Poe hiding it in his top hat? It's clearly not the Medusoid Mycelium, so what even is it? And how does the illegal use of someone's credit card factor into this?

Apologies in advance if there is already a thread on this, or if this is common knowledge and I'm stupid, or if this is posted in the wrong place.

[Tiran O'Saurus]

Answers in order of questions:
1. Because poison has its uses to the sorts of people who burn gardens and steal things.
2. Those same sorts of people may want to keep an eye on their ill-gotten gains, and/or they just needed a plant for the scene to work and grabbed one they'd already stolen.
3. The showing of The Marvelous Marriage was interrupted with the attempted arrest of the principal actors, so it's probably still sitting in a vase onstage.
4. No, because Lemony changed the line about Poe removing his top hat "carefully". He initially thought it was, but later investigation revealed Poe's innocence and cluelessness.
5. A plant with poisonous properties. I don't think it's anything we've heard of.
6. Remember, the official story was that the burning of the Royal Gardens was an accident. Strauss's case didn't involve the fire but something before then. My guess is that the owner of the Royal Gardens bought the plant using a stolen credit card and is being put on trial for it.

[Mally Sebald]

But my point is... what is it's purpose? It has importance beyond just "being useful to fire-starters" considering it was one of the main notes made in the Rare Edition. And in the rare edition, the note about Mr. Poe's top hat is deliberately connected to the notes about the poisonous plant. 

[Tiran O'Saurus]

Judging by how the rest of the series goes, its purpose was "not very much". The Rare Edition is an exercise in showing how things were moving behind the scenes that the Baudelaires only caught glimpses. TBB contained references to a poisonous plant, the Royal Gardens, a vase of prop flowers, and Mr. Poe's house smelling like an evil flower. Stitching those together to create an example of hidden V.F.D. operations was very logical for Handler.

The Mr. Poe connection really is a red herring, though. That's why it explicitly says "a previous draft" when referring to his top hat. He previously thought Poe had the plant, but learned otherwise before publication.

[Uncle Algernon]

Nov 15, 2024 12:31:26 GMT -5 Mally Sebald said:

especially not the Snicket Sleuth's

I am curious what complaint you have against the Sleuth's theory, which seems to me extremely sound in its broad lines. Perhaps claiming that the Poisonous Plant case was to be the crux of the trial at the Hotel is a bit audacious — I would tend to believe that the bench is only one exhibit pertaining to one small fragment of the overall dossier that had been complied against Count Olaf and his associates; and is remarkable only by its size and its ability to be hidden in plain sight — but quotes in hand it seemed hard to refute that Olaf was indeed responsible for the theft and subsequent arson; and that the bench was ferried around by the Fire-Fighting Side due to the incriminating stain.

Or do you simply mean that you reject the Sleuth's more speculative suggestion that the Plant was used in the murder of Jacques?

[Mally Sebald]

The reason I disagree with the Snicket Sleuth's theory is because it's ridiculous. A ring of condensation on a bench from a garden that burned down is not enough to incriminate somebody. But yes, I also disagree with the suggestion that Jacques was killed with the Plant.

Also, if Justice Strauss was being convinced by Jacques Snicket (during the events of TBB, mind you) that Olaf was an arsonist and thief, are we really to believe that she CONTINUED to let the Baudelaires live there, as well as participate in The Marvelous Marriage?

Lastly, If Olaf was really being investigated as a suspect in the Royal Gardens fire, would he not mention it? Or at least show some sort of negative emotion? The Rare Edition states that arsonists would get displeased talking about the weather at the time of the Bad Beginning. Yet, Olaf is described as "sitting calmly as if they were discussing the weather", implying that he was not an arsonist.

All of that to say I don't believe it

[Uncle Algernon]

Nov 15, 2024 22:27:11 GMT -5 Mally Sebald said:

The reason I disagree with the Snicket Sleuth's theory is because it's ridiculous. A ring of condensation on a bench from a garden that burned down is not enough to incriminate somebody.

I mean… it would be in the real world, but this is the ASOUE universe. Certainly Lemony himself frequently claims to have uncovered, or at least corroborated, various details of the narratives he weaves based on equally airy, hyper-specific evidence; I think we must accept that such forms of sleuthing are kosher in ASOUE-land in the same spirit as we accept the workability of Violet's inventions or Olaf's disguises. If the coasters thing doesn't mean something, I don't see why Handler-Snicket would have included those pointed asides, and it would render the significance of the bench curiously obscure.

The rest of your counterarguments are fair. I agree it clearly cannot have been the case that Justice Strauss understood herself to be investigating her neighbour Count Olaf at the time of Bad Beginning, which is another respect in which I'm disinclined to follow the Sleuth's precise conclusions. But then, an important factor he overlooks is the whole business of the Sinister Duo being Strauss's colleagues on the High Court and — implicitly — abusing this position to make sure that Fire-Starters are never actually punished for their crimes. I think the evidence points to Jacques having gotten quite far in pinning the deed on Olaf, only for the papers which actually land on Strauss's desk to be heavily doctored and creatively reinterpreted by the Man With A Beard But No Hair and the Woman With Hair But No Beard, who invent complexities where there are none (to do, apparently, with fake credit cards) and obscure Olaf's involvement altogether.

(To digress somewhat, I believe the Duo factor is, more broadly, a crucial oversight in the Sleuth's guesswork regarding Strauss's relationship to VFD in that post. Unless we posit that their personas as Justices are Olaf-style impersonations rather than their legal identities, surely, surely the Fire-Fighting Side would know Strauss's colleagues are compromised? And if they did, then the Sleuth's particular theory of Strauss-as-VFD-operative crumbles.)

As for your point about Olaf's non-reaction, I'm confused. I've just gone back to the text to double-check, and as I recalled, the passage you quote about Olaf remaining calm occurs at a completely different point from Strauss bringing up her ongoing Poisonous Plant case. Or do you mean that Olaf being in a good mood on the day of the fire contradicts the idea that he'd be one of these bad-tempered arsonists who are driven to treat bottles irresponsibly? That seems like a stretch. Surely the idea is that in such a case, the bad mood is a result of the weather interfering with the arsonist's plans to set fires — so obviously, once the Baudelaire Mansion has in fact burned down despite the initially unpromising drizzle, our arsonist would be a happy duck once more.

[tricky]

Optimism is my Phil-osophy

[Tiran O'Saurus]

Nov 15, 2024 23:39:16 GMT -5 Uncle Algernon said:

(To digress somewhat, I believe the Duo factor is, more broadly, a crucial oversight in the Sleuth's guesswork regarding Strauss's relationship to VFD in that post. Unless we posit that their personas as Justices are Olaf-style impersonations rather than their legal identities, surely, surely the Fire-Fighting Side would know Strauss's colleagues are compromised? And if they did, then the Sleuth's particular theory of Strauss-as-VFD-operative crumbles.)

I'm not convinced the Fire-Fighters do know that the Sinister Duo are the High Court Justices. The whole plan in TPP is reliant on luring everyone to the hotel and then holding a trial, and then just relying on the legal system doing it's job and finding all the villains guilty. Remember, their interpretation of "justice is blind" means nobody's seen them during a trial to put together that they're the Sinister Duo, and I also don't think many fire-fighters have ever seen the Duo. They seen to just organize the lesser villains while remaining in the background.

Otherwise, I do think the Sleuth is wrong, or at least over-emphasizing. That bench might be a minor piece of evidence, but the trial wasn't really set up the way they are in reality. They put the Baudelaires and Count Olaf on trial at the same time and tried to see who was more guilty, to the extent that "comparatively innocent" was a valid plea.

[Uncle Algernon]

Nov 16, 2024 9:10:46 GMT -5 Tiran O'Saurus said:

The whole plan in TPP is reliant on luring everyone to the hotel and then holding a trial, and then just relying on the legal system doing it's job and finding all the villains guilty.

It's Strauss's plan. I'm not so sure it was (or at least that it was the whole of) VFD's plan.

Nov 16, 2024 9:10:46 GMT -5 Tiran O'Saurus said:

Remember, their interpretation of "justice is blind" means nobody's seen them during a trial to put together that they're the Sinister Duo, and I also don't think many fire-fighters have ever seen the Duo. They seen to just organize the lesser villains while remaining in the background.

And yet… The very first thing we learn about them is that Lemony knows their names, even if he's not telling us:

And even I, after all this time, can feel their aura of menace so strongly, just by writing about these two people, that I dare not say their names, and will instead refer to them the way everyone who dares refer to them refers to them, as "the man with a beard, but no hair" and "the woman with hair, but no beard".

The Slippery Slope, Chapter 6

I suppose, looking at that quote alone, it is conceivable that he only found out their names after the events of The Penultimate Peril, which still allows him to have known about said names for a great span of time by the point he writes TSS, but that doesn't feel like the most intuitive reading of the evidence.

And indeed, The Penultimate Peril adds stronger evidence. Consider Dewey's monologue:

Occasionally, when volunteers have been lost or safe places destroyed, we’ve had to go ourselves to collect the information that has been left behind. We’ve retrieved Josephine Anwhistle’s files from Lake Lachrymose and carefully copied down their contents. We’ve pasted together the burnt scraps of Madame Lulu’s archival library and taken notes on what we’ve found. We’ve searched the childhood home of the man with a beard but no hair, and interviewed the math teacher of the woman with hair but no beard. We’ve memorized important articles within the stacks of newspaper in Paltryville, and we’ve thrown important items out of the windows of our destroyed headquarters, so they might wind up somewhere safe at sea. We’ve taken every crime, every theft, every wicked deed, and every incident of rudeness since the schism began, and cataloged them into an entire library of misfortune.

The Penultimate Peril, Chapter 8

Sure, Dewey knows some things run-of-the-mill Volunteers don't, but "we…" makes it sound like the investigations into the Duo's pasts were group efforts, not even necessarily carried out by the same Volunteer or Volunteers.

Consider this aside from Lemony:

The woman with hair but no beard pointed a finger at the three children that looked as crooked as she was. The finger had been broken long ago, in a dispute over a game of backgammon, which is another story that would take at least thirteen books to describe, but in the Baudelaires’ story the finger only made this brief appearance as it pointed at the children in alarm.

The Penultimate Peril, Chapter 12

This doesn't sound like a man to whom the Sinister Duo are mysterious figures whose very identities are a question of conjecture. And indeed, it is reiterated that they are simply “villains of such wickedness that it is far too shocking and upsetting for me to write down their names”.

This does leave open the possibility that they were known to VFD by other, truer names than those under which they operate as High Court Justices; that their judge personas are disguises. It's possible. But they don't make any efforts to disguise their distinctive voices, which the Baudelaires quickly recognise; in all those years, wouldn't another Volunteer have done the same? Both Olaf and Lemony refer to them uncritically as "the judges" or "the judges of the High Court" at different points in Chapter 13, which to me gives a strong impression that these are indeed their legitimate identities.

"Those judges promised that if I waited until tomorrow I’d see all my enemies destroyed," Count Olaf grumbled, "and now they’re trying to capture me. I knew they’d fail me some day."

The Baudelaires did not have time to point out that Olaf had also failed the judges, by planning to poison them, along with everyone else in the lobby, with the Medusoid Mycelium, because the elevator immediately stopped on the second story and opened its doors.

The Penultimate Peril, Chapter 13

Perhaps the noise you hear outside your door is a bearded man trying to climb into your window, or perhaps it is a woman in a crow-shaped hat hailing a taxi. Perhaps you have spotted the managers of the Hotel Denouement, or the judges of the High Court, or the waiters of Café Salmonella or the Anxious Clown, or perhaps you have met an expert on injustice or become one yourself.

The Penultimate Peril, Chapter 13

The remaining puzzle, then, is what the Hell Dewey was planning.

[Dewey] turned to the Baudelaires. “Both these people have helped us immeasurably,” he said, using a word which here means ‘a whole lot’. "Justice Strauss has reported the details of your case to the other judges in the High Court. And Jerome Squalor has done some critical research on injustice."

The Penultimate Peril, Chapter 8

But we know Dewey's plan was a more daring and more complicated gambit than the Baudelaire realised. There is much talk of the other Judges "arriving" some time after Strauss does. Is it possible that the Sinister Duo are known, yes, but reclusive? Perhaps the trial was a scheme within a scheme. Playing at being more naive than they really are (and using poor Strauss as a catspaw), the Dewey/Kit/Lemony axis of Volunteers set up the trial as if they genuinely trusted the legal system, organising just so that it would be child's play for the two mole-Judges to hijack it for evil… thus creating bait the Sinister Duo can't resist and drawing them right into Hotel Denouement where they can hopefully be exposed — or indeed assassinated. Perhaps the laundry-room supposedly containing the Sugar Bowl, and fitted with jugs of "extremely flammable chemicals", wasn't just a honey trap for Olaf? But it's hard to say precisely what the real plan was or precisely why it goes off the rails.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I'm grateful that you invited me to this conversation. I get an email every time someone mentions me. Oh... this subject fascinates me. I've come up with so many scenarios, and none of them are definitive. In fact, my fanfic "Untie My Silence Knot" addresses this issue as a good fanfic, I would say. But as I explained to Dante at the time, it's not that I really believe it'slets canon.

So let's start reading again: TBBRE author notes:

"For more information on the destruction of the Royal Gardens, interested parties might turn to the following articles in The Daily Punctilio, the city’s newspaper: “Arson Suspected in Destruction of Royal Gardens,” by Jacques Snicket, and “Absolutely No Arson or Any Other Suspicious Thing Associated with the Royal Gardens, which Simply Burned to the Ground and Then Were Covered in Dirt Due to Wind, Says Official Fire Department,” by Geraldine Julienne. Incidentally, the Royal Gardens had several ornate wooden benches ideal for sitting and reading, or for contemplating the more exotic plants contained in the Poisonous Pavilion. All of these benches were lost in the destruction except one, which has since been moved to the lobby of a hotel. It is easily recognizable due to a small unsightly ring, left by someone who did not use a coaster underneath his or her beverage."

I think it's possible to deduce that Olaf or one of his supporters had destroyed the royal gardens in search of a poisonous plant, and that this was Daniel Handler's intention in creating this subplot. But the more interesting question is: when did this happen? And the answer to that question is: "The fire happened around the time that Jacques Snicket was working at The Daily Punctilio." Although the investigation into what happened is still ongoing at the time of the main events described in TBB, I highly doubt that the fire itself occurred at that time. I believe it was about more than 15 years before the main events described in TBB.

TGG chapter 5:
"I spent four long years training salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires. That was when you were very young, Fiona, but your brother worked right alongside me. You should have seen him sneaking extra worms to his favorites! Aye! The program was a modest success! Aye! But then Café Salmonella came along, and took our entire fleet away. The Snicket siblings fought as best they could. Aye! Historians call it the Snicket Snickersnee! Aye! But as the poet wrote, ‘Too many waiters turn out to be traitors.’”

“The Snicket siblings?” Klaus was quick to ask.

“Aye,” the captain said. “Three of them, each as noble as the next. Aye! Kit Snicket helped build this submarine! Aye! Jacques Snicket proved that the Royal Gardens Fire was arson! Aye! And the third sibling, with the marmosets—”


The acts of the three Snickets seem to have occurred many years in the past, as Captain W describes them. The time Geraldine Juliene and Jacques Snicket worked together at the DP, according to LSTUA, was around the time of Lemony's engagement. At that time, Olaf was still accepted as a peaceful person. But soon after Lemony fled abroad, Olaf revealed himself to be an arsonist. Eleonora Poe revealed herself to be a supporter of Olaf and an enemy of VFD. Only then did Geraldine Juliene become a tool of Olaf's support.

A vile act of public arson that proved Olaf's true intentions to the VFD members, which is why Jacques' report was so important. And evidently the publication of this report meant the end of Jacques' short career in The Daily Punctilio, which is why there is no other evidence of his reporting on the DP.... Not! "VERIFYING FERNALD ’ S DEFECTION ,’ The fire caused by Fernald was also reported by Jacques Snicket. I think all this indicates that the fire caused by Fernald and the Fire caused by Olaf in the Royal Garden must have happened around the same time. I don't think Eleanor Poe would have let Jacques Snicket print the truth about Olaf's supporters for very long.  It is very unlikely that Jacques was inThe Daily Punctilio, volved in the DP up until the time of the main events described in TBB. 

Honestly speaking, I think the issue involving the burning of the royal gardens and the poisoned plant seems to me to be involved with the poisoned darts. It's the only canonical connection that seems to make sense to me. I think people don't make this connection because of a conceptual error: people want to believe that Beatrice and Bertrand killed Count Olaf's father, even though the evidence points to Olat himself being the one who must have killed his own father using poisoned darts.


Follow along: Olaf stole and covered up the theft of a poisonous plant. He knows that one or both of his parents were killed by poison darts, as indicated in TPP. Dewey and Kit were gathering information about crimes. Kit, with a smile, described the night the search for the poison darts took place. Although Kit is capable of fighting and killing for her ideals, I don't think she would talk about it so naturally and with a smile on her face. Kit must have been talking about an event that she was proud to have participated in despite the hardships. In other words, it is quite possible that Kit was gathering evidence involving the murder of Count Olaf's father or parents during the opera night, along with Bertrand and Beatrice. A similar behavior can be seen through Bratrice's reaction. During the opera night, Bratrice did something that she would like to remember (that's why we take souvenirs home). And that's what happened: after the night at the opera she was feeling good about herself, and even commented that it had been an unforgettable night. I may have my doubts about Beatrice's morality, but I don't think she's a sadist.
Furthermore, when the subject of the poison darts came up in TPP, Olaf reacted very naturally. He didn't show any anger towards the Baudelaires, as if it had anything to do with their parents. In fact, in TPP, Olaf showed more affection for the Baudelaires because they were acting in a similar way to how he would act, and even admiration when he discovered how resourceful they had been earlier.

Regarding the credit card, I think it has to do with the question: "where did the money come from to finance some criminal act associated with the event in some way?" This is a common question in investigations. Not knowing the details of Jacques' investigation, I think it's impossible to have a precise answer, but it's very easy to think of several possibilities. Even the money used to buy gas for Olaf's car could have been included in the investigation.

And regarding the importance of the royal gardens and the poisonous plant, we can see that even in TBL this is mentioned. So, there must be some important subplot in the story. For me, this is what makes the most sense: Olaf began his fight against VFD by murdering his parents, and to do so he stole a poisonous plant from the royal gardens and set the place on fire. He gained supporters in the fight against VFD, namely Eleonora Poe. Before being fired, Jacques Snicket started an investigation and published an article in the newspaper reaffirming Olaf's guilt. Geraldine Juliene denied the article, but the members of VFD were alerted to Count Olaf's true intentions. After the death of Olaf's parents, Kit Snicket, Dewey, Beatrice and Bertrand began the investigation into who was responsible for the murder. The murder weapons passed through the hands of Kit and Beatrice during the opera night. Over the years, the judicial investigation dragged on, as it was still necessary to connect the poison in the dart to a specific plan, and justice was slow to act. In the meantime, the Anwistle Schism occurred, in which a fire was needed to stop the proliferation of the deadly MM fungus. While Beatrice's plan focused on finding a cure, Olaf and Fernald were used by one of the factions to set fire to the cause of the problem, that is, the AA facilities, and end the threat of the fungus. Because of this act, a truce was called between Olaf and the rest of VFD, but in reality it was the beginning of an undeclared war that began between Olaf and VFD. This truce ended when the three Baudelaires ended up in Olaf's house, and he began to act to steal one of VFD's greatest resources: the Baudelaire inheritance.

[Tiran O'Saurus]

Nov 16, 2024 10:11:54 GMT -5 Uncle Algernon said:

But we know Dewey's plan was a more daring and more complicated gambit than the Baudelaire realised. There is much talk of the other Judges "arriving" some time after Strauss does. Is it possible that the Sinister Duo are known, yes, but reclusive? Perhaps the trial was a scheme within a scheme. Playing at being more naive than they really are (and using poor Strauss as a catspaw), the Dewey/Kit/Lemony axis of Volunteers set up the trial as if they genuinely trusted the legal system, organising just so that it would be child's play for the two mole-Judges to hijack it for evil… thus creating bait the Sinister Duo can't resist and drawing them right into Hotel Denouement where they can hopefully be exposed — or indeed assassinated. Perhaps the laundry-room supposedly containing the Sugar Bowl, and fitted with jugs of "extremely flammable chemicals", wasn't just a honey trap for Olaf? But it's hard to say precisely what the real plan was or precisely why it goes off the rails.

That does make more sense. Even as I was writing out my description of the plan, I was thinking it seemed very naive. The reason it goes off the rails, though, is because the trial is held a day early, before everyone can arrive and get everything in place. Kit and Widdershins were meant to be there, as was Hector and the Quagmires. With Dewey dead, Kit still a day's journey away, and Lemony driving away from the hotel with the sugar bowl in his taxi, none of the big planning axis was there to set off the trap for the Duo.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I hope they at least had the honor of dying in that fire.

[Tiran O'Saurus]

I doubt it. They were in the lobby and the only people not wearing blindfolds.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Nov 16, 2024 13:15:22 GMT -5 Tiran O'Saurus said:

I doubt it. They were in the lobby and the only people not wearing blindfolds.

Can you comment on what you think of what I wrote? The theory, I mean