Family Comes First- ASOUE

Chapter 27: Exposing a Murderer

*Duncan's POV*

"Stephano? Is this true?" Mr. Poe asked. I glared at him. We provided solid evidence that he's a damned liar and Mr. Poe thinks he'll 'fess up?!

"The reason that I said I know nothing of snakes is, um, I... I was being modest!" Stephano suggested.

"You were not being modest!" Isadora said with a scoff. "You haven't been modest a day in your life! You were lying!"

"Isadora, you mustn't speak to an adult that way," Mr. Poe said to her.

"I can talk to anyone however I damn well please! Especially him! He's nothing but a liar and a murderer and a drunken, savage brute!! That man is Count Olaf and you must need glasses more than Klaus does if you can't see that! He murdered Uncle Monty and tried to pin the blame on the Mamba du Mal!"

"You do not have any proof of that!" Stephano countered.

"Yes, we do." Violet said. She walked over to a nearby table and set down the suitcase, dumping the contents onto it.

"What is all this?" Poe asked her.

"Evidence I found in Stephano's suitcase." She said proudly.

"But it was locked, wasn't it?!" Stephano asked, his eyes widening slightly.

Violet smirked. "I mean it was..." She said with a small giggle. "But then I picked the lock."

"Nice girls shouldn't know how to pick locks."

"Violet is a nice girl!" I corrected rather aggressively.

"And she knows how to do all sorts of things!" Klaus added.

"Violet, please continue." Isadora said with a smile.

"When Uncle Monty died, we were immediately suspicious and we were positive that Stephano had killed him. Look at all these things I found in Stephano's suitcase."

"That's my random junk collection..." Stephano said defensively.

"It does look like junk, but that's when I found this empty vial of the Mamba du Mal's venom. There's an empty spot in that case of venom samples."

Mr. Poe stepped towards the case and surveyed it. "The missing one is marked Mamba du Mal!"

"Then it's obvious! The Mamba du Mal got out of its cage, stole the sample, slipped it into my bag to frame me, and killed Dr. Montgomery."

"That's ridiculous," Violet said, "And still wrong. The Mamba du Mal couldn't have killed Monty. Klaus could you please read that excerpt you and Izzie found?"

Klaus nodded and quickly fetched the book he was reading from, opening it to the correct page. "'The Mamba du Mal is one of the deadliest snakes in the hemisphere, noted for its strangulatory grip, used in conjunction with its deadly venom, giving all its victims a tenebrous hue, which is ghastly to behold.'" He quoted.

"To paraphrase," Isadora said, "The Mamba du Mal strangles as it injects its venom, which leaves the neck dark with ghastly looking bruises. Uncle Monty had no bruises anywhere. He was as pale as can be, so there's no feasible way the Mamba du Mal killed him."

Violet put together the devices as they explained. "Thank you, you two. Before anyone mentions the 'bite marks' on his cheek, they aren't bite marks at all." She said, putting another object onto the weapon. "When I first saw these items, I wasn't sure how they fit together. So, I concentrated on each piece as if they were parts of a machine. That's when I realized that they fit together." She plugged the vial of venom onto a needle sticking out the top. The final device looked kind of like a gun, in that it had a handle and a place to shoot something, in this case venom, out of it. "Ladies, gentleman, and semi-respectable enby: the murder weapon. Stephano used this double barrel syringe to inject the venom into Uncle Monty, to simulate the double puncture marks of a snake. Then, he disassembled it to hide the evidence"

I couldn't stop smiling. She's so fucking cool I swear to God!!! I had no words and I still can't even begin to explain how much I believe in Violet Baudelaire Supremacy. Anyways, tangent over.

"But Dr. Montgomery was my best friend!!" Stephano lied. "I would have no motive to kill him!!"

"As we know," Violet said, ignoring Stephano, "When I turn eighteen, and when the Quagmires turn eighteen, we will be able to inherit our respective family riches: The Baudelaire Fortune and the Quagmire Sapphires. Stephano intends to get those riches for himself, and he was going to kidnap us and take us onto the S.S. Prospero to Peru to make it easier to carry out his plan. These are the tickets for the ship right here." She said, holding up six tickets.

"Listen, the kid detective thing is cute, but how would I even know about the fortunes! I just met you yesterday!"

"You just met Dr. Montgomery yesterday as well, and you said he was your best friend."

"I'm... An excellent judge of character..."

"Liar." Violet said simply and continued. "He's really Count Olaf, as we've been trying to tell you, Mr. Poe. He used this powder puff and mirror to disguise his tattoo on his ankle. It's not inkless, it's just covered in lots of makeup."

Stephano scoffed as Mr. Poe took out his handkerchief. "Sir, please may I see your left ankle?"

"Don't come near me with that thing! You've been coughing germs into it all day!"

"If you're really who the children say you are, then germs are the least of your problems." He beat his handkerchief against the table to knock off the germs that would be on it. "Your left ankle." He said with more insistence this time.

Stephano rolled his eyes and put his foot onto the table with force so it'd make a loud, intimidating noise. He smirked at the banker as Poe licked the handkerchief to get it wet and exposed the ankle. He rubbed and rubbed until the lines of the eye on his ankle became clearer and clearer.

I grinned. "For the first time in my life I'm happy to see that awful tattoo."