Snicket file

The Snicket file is an important file of documents from the A Series of Unfortunate Events children's series.

Suggested in The Slippery Slope to have been written by Jacques, Kit and Lemony Snicket, it is first mentioned in The Hostile Hospital, in which it is also referred to as the "Baudelaire file", for its thirteen pages are placed it the Baudelaire file instead of the Snicket file, revealed in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography on Babs's request to Hal in a form of a letter. Count Olaf wants to obtain and destroy it because it supposedly has enough evidence to put him and his associates in jail. The Baudelaire orphans also want the file after learning from the keeper of the Library of Records at Heimlich Hospital, Hal, that it contains information about themselves. However, they only retrieve the last page - page 13 - which was accidentally left behind when the rest was removed for an official investigation, the nature of which is unknown.

In the The Slippery Slope, Count Olaf is given it by the Man With a Beard but No Hair and the Woman With Hair but No Beard, in reward for having burnt down Caligari Carnival. He, they and Esmé Squalor retreat into his tent to read it and discuss its contents - sending away his associates, who he did not want to learn the file's secrets. The file is later revealed to name the location of the last safe place for V.F.D.. Afterwards, it vanishes from the narrative and does not appear again; it is assumed to either still be in Count Olaf's possession or to have been destroyed as he intended. It has no significance to the story after these events occurred.

Contents

The Snicket file has thirteen pages and is said to contain charts, maps, and photographs. It has also been described by characters in the series as "the file about the Snicket fires" and "the Baudelaire file." The thirteenth page features a photograph of Jacques Snicket, a man facing away from the camera, very probably Lemony Snicket, and Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire (and, out of sight, the photographer) standing in front of 667 Dark Avenue in cold weather, accompanied by the text "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown." The contents of page nine, and the rest of the pages of the file (except for one page, which is really various attempts to compose an opening sentence for The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket), are unknown, as is which fire the text refers to, although the Baudelaire siblings suspected it was the fire that destroyed their home; it may also have referred to the fire that destroyed the Quagmire home, which Quigley Quagmire survived, while his siblings believed him and their parents to be dead, or to many other fires (perhaps those allegedly lit by Lemony Snicket himself, though he specifically denies this in both 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket and Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, which he claims were really lit by Count Olaf).