The Vile Village

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are in Mr. Poe’s office looking at The Daily Punctilio. Mr. Poe gives them a brochure for a new program for an entire village to serve as a guardian. The children choose V.F.D., after the acronym which Duncan and Isadora Quagmire had previously discovered to be part of a terrible secret somehow related to Count Olaf.

The children depart for V.F.D. by bus, and after a long, hot, and dusty walk from the bus stop, they reach the town of V.F.D., which is filled with crows. They become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaims that the children will do all the chores for the entire village, and assign Hector the handyman as their guardian. There is also a new Chief of Police, named Officer Luciana.

Hector takes them to his home, where he shows them his barn and the Nevermore Tree where all the crows roost at night. The Baudelaires learn that V.F.D. stands for the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector shows the Baudelaires the following couplet, found at the base of Nevermore Tree:

For sapphires we are held in here,
Only you can end our fear.

The Baudelaires discover that Hector has been breaking the strict and unfair town rules by keeping a secret library and working on a hot-air mobile home, so he can sail away from V.F.D. forever. They discuss the Quagmires and consider Isadora might be somehow sending the Baudelaires a plea for help in the poem. They also discover a new couplet under the tree:

Until dawn comes we cannot speak,
No words can come from this sad beak.

The Baudelaires and Hector do various jobs around the Village of Fowl Devotees like cutting the bushes in Mrs. Morrow’s yard and washing the windows on Mr. Lesko’s house.

Three members of the Council of Elders report that Count Olaf has been captured, and the Baudelaires are to report immediately to the Town Hall. The Baudelaires discover Jacques Snicket was captured instead. Jacques also has one eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. The children insist that he is not Count Olaf, but the townspeople do not listen to them and plan to burn him at the stake.

That night, Sunny keeps watch at Nevermore Tree to see where the poems are coming from, while Klaus searches the rules of V.F.D. to help Jacques out of trouble, and Violet helps finish Hector’s hot-air balloon device. Klaus discovers that a rule allows the accused to make a speech explaining himself. If a few people say something, mob psychology can make everyone demand the same thing, and thus they can suggest that they release Jacques. Sunny discovers that the crows are delivering the couplets and finds a new one:

The first thing you read contains the clue,
An initial way to speak to you.

When the children run to the uptown jail where Jacques is being held, they learn that he is dead. V.F.D.’s police officer, Luciana announces that Jacques (as Count Olaf) has been murdered in the night, and Olaf, masquerading as Detective Dupin, claims that Violet’s hair ribbon and a lens from Klaus’s glasses were found on the scene, and Sunny’s tooth marks are on the body. The people ignore the orphans’ solid alibis and the children are quickly locked up, to burn them at the stake the following day. Detective Dupin tells the children that one of them will make a great escape before the burning, making it possible for him to inherit the Baudelaire fortune, and leaves them to decide who will survive.

While they are locked up, Klaus realizes it is his 13th birthday. The Baudelaires are devastated that they will probably die tomorrow and cry because of everything that has happened. Officer Luciana brings them water and bread. Violet pours the pitcher of water down a wooden bench onto the wall to soften the mortar and then squeezes the water out of the bread where it had collected at the bottom of the wall. This process, repeated all through the day, evening and following morning slowly starts to weaken the walls of the prison cell.

At daybreak, Hector comes to the window and tells them that if they manage to break out, he has the hot-air balloon ready. He also gives them the daily couplet:

Inside these letters, the eye will see,
Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.

Running out of time, they break free of the jail using the wooden bench as a battering ram against the weakened mortar and read all the poems together.

For sapphires, we are held in here.
Only you can end our fear.
Until dawn comes we cannot speak.
No words can come from this sad beak.
The first thing you read contains the clue.
An initial way to speak to you.
Inside these letters, the eye will see.
Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.

The Baudelaires figure out a number of things: The sapphires refer to the Quagmires’ fortune. The Quagmires cannot speak until dawn as the crows do not arrive uptown until then. The initial way to speak to them is the first letter of each verse, which spells out ‘Fountain.’ They rush to Fowl Fountain where Sunny presses a secret button, revealing the damp Quagmires inside.

At this point, they flee the mob on its way to burn them at the stake and make a run for the outskirts of town. As they go, the Quagmires explain that Count Olaf locked them in the tower of his house, then had his associates build the fountain and imprison the Quagmires. The Quagmires attached the couplet to the crows’ feet every morning, which fell off in the Nevermore Tree when the paper was dry. They tell the Baudelaires that the man who died was Jacques Snicket. The mob catches up to them and they run again.

They reach the outskirts of town and Hector arrives in his hot-air mobile home. He throws down a rope ladder and the Quagmires start to climb. As the villagers catch up to them Officer Luciana shoots at the rope ladder with a harpoon gun, breaking the rope while the Baudelaires are still climbing, in violation of the village’s “no mechanical devices” law as stated by Mrs. Morrow. Saddened they must climb back down or risk falling to their deaths if the ladder breaks, they jump down to earth, saying goodbye to the Quagmires, who throw their notebooks down to the Baudelaires to reveal their discoveries.

Detective Dupin arrives on a motorcycle as he can’t be busted for violating the same rule due to not living in the Village of Fowl Devotees. He shows the Baudelaires the latest paper from The Daily Punctilio stating that the Baudelaires have murdered “Count Omar.” A final harpoon pierces the Quagmires’ notebooks and scatters them as the hot-air mobile home heads towards the horizon. One villager notices Dupin’s single eyebrow without his sunglasses, causing the Council of Elders to see if there is a tattoo on his ankle, and Count Olaf’s identity is exposed. One crow is injured in the process of Luciana shooting Hector’s mobile home, causing the villagers to get angry with them.

Count Olaf and Officer Luciana, now revealed to be Esmé Squalor, escape on a motorcycle. As the crowd goes to the crow, one Council of Elder member tells the Baudelaires to stay put as they’ll still be burned at the stake for the crimes when they are done taking the crow to the V.F.D. veterinarian. The Baudelaires flee rather than wait for the villagers to return.