After leaving Aunt Josephine to be eaten by the leeches, he brings the children back to the house, where Sunny is able to prove that he was Count Olaf to Mr. They are able to signal for help, but only Count Olaf arrives on a ship. While travelling back, Lachrymose leeches attempt to suck their blood due to smelling food in Aunt Josephine's stomach since she ate a banana under the one hour limit. They endure the storm and reach the Curdled Cave, where Aunt Josephine reveals that Count Olaf forced her to write the note, and broke the Wide Window to cause them to believe that she had committed suicide. There, they encounter one of Count Olaf's henchpeople, a large person of undetermined gender. With this information, the Baudelaire orphans go to steal a boat from Captain Sham's boat store near Lake Lachrymose to get to Curdled Cave while the hurricane continues on. Once they finish the note, Hurricane Herman hits and the house begins to fall apart into the lake. Klaus shows them the note is in Aunt Josephine's handwriting but coded a hidden message using grammar errors, which all together form the two words 'Curdled Cave'. Allergic, they break into hives, forcing Count Olaf to allow them to go back to their aunt's house.

Needing a distraction to come up with a strategy, Violet puts peppermints in her own food and that of Klaus and Sunny. Poe refuses to believe the children's claim the note was a lie by Count Olaf and takes them to dinner with him at a cheap and grimy restaurant with an over-enthusiastic waiter, the Anxious Clown. That night, the children hear a crash and find out that their new guardian had jumped out of the Wide Window that overlooks Lake Lachrymose, and that before doing so left a note for them informing them that Captain Sham will be their new guardian.

Aunt Josephine declines to believe this due to Captain Sham's charming personality. While helping Aunt Josephine in the grocery store, Violet runs into a sailor named 'Captain Sham', who she concludes is Count Olaf in disguise. Her library is filled with books about the grammar of the English language because she loves grammar. Aunt Josephine is afraid of almost everything from cooking food because she is scared that her stove would explode, to her welcome mat. Poe puts the Baudelaire orphans, Klaus Baudelaire, Sunny Baudelaire and Violet Baudelaire under the care of Aunt Josephine, who lives in a house atop a hill overlooking Lake Lachrymose, a lake so large that hurricanes have occurred in that area. The book was published on Februby HarperCollins and illustrated by Brett Helquist.

In this novel, the Baudelaire orphans live with their aunt Josephine, who is seemingly scared of everything. The Wide Window is the third novel of the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.

The series of unfortunate events book 5