As Lemony sat weeping by the curb, a large Rolls Royce pulled up in front of the house. A short man emerged from the car, followed by a butler carrying an armload of packages and a nurse carrying an infant girl.
"My house!," shouted the man, "My wife was at home! Did you see what happened? Did she get out?" he asked Lemony.
"No," said Lemony miserably.
"I was just out for a few minutes buying some toys for our darling Carmelita," the man said. "How could a fire have started so fast?"
"I can't help you," said Lemony. He walked away before the man could identify him as a wanted arsonist.
Lemony vowed, "Olaf, I'll expose you to the world. I'll dedicate my life to collecting information about you, starting now."
For the next thirteen years, Lemony was a phantom. Very few people knew for sure that he was still alive. Lemony didn't know whether it was Kit or Jacques or Isabella who had betrayed him, so he kept out of the sight of everyone, working in disguise and by covert channels. But documents started showing up at the Valorous Farms Dairy, in the vast filing system of the Heimlich Hospital, and in many other places. He even started visiting the archives of the Daily Punctilio (which were stacked beside the street in Paltryville), tearing out articles about himself and Olaf, and tossing them into the wind near places frequented by V.F.D. members. People began talking about the Snicket Files.
The only blind spot in his paranoia was Madame Lulu diLustro. He continued to trust her and let her help him with investigations. It was an unfortunate blind spot because Madame Lulu could not be trusted. She would help anyone who asked; if anyone asked her if Lemony was still alive, she would tell them. One of the people who did was Jacques Snicket.
One day, when Lemony was secretly spying on the Baudelaire home, he spotted a woman coming out who looked like Esmé in disguise. He decided he must investigate further. That night, when the Baudelaire parents were out, he sneaked into their house using the tunnel from 667 Dark Avenue (Jerome Squalor owned the building and rented out apartments there, but he was not yet living in the penthouse).
We Baudelaire children had been left that night with an unreliable babysitter named Meg Eigis. She had fallen asleep early and left us to watch a scary movie called "Vampires in the Retirement Community." When we heard noises downstairs, we thought vampires were coming to get us. But now we know that it was only Lemony.
Lemony began looking for clues wherever he could. When he came to the kitchen and found the his-and-her refrigerators, he opened them and looked inside. In Isabella's refrigerator he found eggplant parmesan, beans and rice casserole, and veggie burgers. In Ferdinand's refrigerator were steak, roast chicken, and hot dogs. He knew then that Isabella was a vegetarian, or at least pretending to be one, or had a vegetarian visiting her for a few days. He also knew that vegetarianism was currently "in."
Next he checked out the hatstand in the hall. There was a round hat with feathers sticking out every which way, also very "in." He checked the label in the hat and found a designer label reading "Exclusively for Esmé ."
Finally, he checked Isabella's desk. There were several Post-It notes on the papers. He examined them carefully. The writing was exactly like the bit of script he had seen that night on the paper poking out from under the book.
Isabella Baudelaire was his mortal enemy, the relative who had betrayed both himself and Beatrice to Count Olaf.
"Isabella," Lemony thought, "If anything terrible happens to you or your children (and I know Count Olaf will do something sooner or later), then I'll write down every miserable detail in a series of books, in a mock-serious style so that the world will laugh at their misfortunes. This will be my duty; I swear it."