Mr. Poe refuses to believe the children's claim the note was a lie by Count Olaf and takes them to dinner with him at the Anxious Clown, a cheap and grimy restaurant with an over-enthusiastic waiter.

Klaus shows them that, though the note is in Aunt Josephine's handwriting, the message 'Curdled Cave' is encoded by grammar errors.

As they finish decoding the note, Hurricane Herman hits and the house begins to fall apart into the lake.

They endure the storm and reach the Curdled Cave, where Aunt Josephine reveals that Count Olaf forced her to write the note and that he broke the Wide Window, causing the Baudelaires to believe that she had committed suicide.

[2] The book includes seven new illustrations, and the third part of a serial supplement entitled The Cornucopian Cavalcade, which features a 13-part comic by Michael Kupperman entitled The Spoily Brats, an advice column written by Lemony Snicket, and, as in The Bad Beginning; or, Orphans!

and The Reptile Room; or, Murder!, (the final) part of a story by Stephen Leacock entitled Q: A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural.