“Stolen!” breathed Emily.
“Yes, indeed! And you in that poor, raggedly little dress. Mrs. Meeching will no doubt inform you that they were— lost, but I want you to know, child, that I will do all in my power to see that a warm dress is purchased for you.”
A new dress could be purchased, but not Mama’s jewels! Should she tell Mrs. Plumly about them? Emily wondered miserably. No, she decided, better not. Mrs. Plumly was unhappy enough, and no need to add to her woe. The jewels were gone, and that was that. “Thank you, Aunty Plum!” was all Emily said, and she said it fervently.
Mrs. Plumly smiled. “I must say that in spite of that sad dress, you are looking so much better now, almost as if you were able to eat all the food placed on the table before you.”
“Oh, I am!” cried Emily. It was all she could do not to tell, right then and there, about the fish syrup, Clarabelle, and all the activities now taking place just above their heads. But she said nothing.
“You aren’t eating so much, dear child, that you would turn down a little cake and perhaps even a cup of tea—with lots of sugar and milk, of course!” Mrs. Plumly laughed. “Oh, the look on your face, child!”
Knowing that Mrs. Meeching was away seemed to make this visit so much pleasanter than the last. Emily had two lemon tarts and a chocolate cream eclair, and she and Mrs. Plumly talked and talked. They talked only about Emily’s past, however, about her friend Theodora, her dear housekeeper Mrs. Leslie, and of course about Mama and Papa. They even laughed and giggled like schoolgirls together when Emily told of some of her pranks as a small girl, like the time she had hidden Mama’s silver thimble. It had seemed so naughty then! Before Emily knew it, she had finished two cups of tea, was allowing a third to be poured, and had lost all track of time.
She might have stayed there the day if the doleful grandfather clock had not warned from the dining room that it was already eleven, and she had not even begun her chores. With a start, she jumped up from her chair. And it was at that exact moment that the door flew open, and Mrs. Meeching stood there!
“So this is what happens when I’m away, Mrs. Plumly!” Her face was contorted with pale rage.
Mrs. Plumly began to tremble violently. “I—I—”
“Silence! There is nothing you can say. Nothing! After all my kindness, all my generosity—entertaining this orphan brat no sooner I am out of sight.’ Mrs. Meeching turned to Emily and fixed her with a look of icy hatred. “Get out of my sight. Go to your room and stay there until you are sent for. Then you will see how those are dealt with who take advantage of their place in Sugar Hill Hall!”
With a shaking hand, Emily picked up her bucket and fled the room. When she heard the door slam behind her, it seemed to slam right on her breast, knocking out every last breath of air. That she herself might be punished, she had no doubt, but what, what would happen to Mrs. Plumly?
It was five terrible hours before an ashen-faced Aunt Twice appeared at the door to Emily’s cellar room to inform her that they were all wanted in the parlor by Mrs. Meeching. Her heart thumping with terror, Emily scurried up the stairs behind her deadly silent aunt. But whatever Emily expected to find when she reached her destination, nothing in her wildest imagination could have matched the scene that greeted her when she finally stepped into the parlor.
Directly in front of the peppermints now stood a long, thin table pointing into the room like a sharp, accusing finger. Huddled to one side of it stood Mrs. Poovey and Mrs. Loops, Mr. Bottle and Mr. Dobbs, Mrs. Middle and Mrs. Odd, Mr. Popple and Mr. Quish, Mrs. Apple and Mrs. Quirk, Mrs. Dolly and Mrs. Biggs, Mr. Flower and Mr. Figg, and in fact every one of the old people, all staring at the table as if their frightened eyes were nailed to it. At the head of the table, her back to the peppermints, stood Mrs. Meeching, flanked on one side by Tilly, and on the other by Mrs. Plumly, who was not knitting, but looked instead as if she had turned to stone.
On the table before Mrs. Meeching, displayed as if in evidence for a criminal trial, was a large brown bottle of fish syrup Emily had left for safekeeping in Mrs. Poovey’s and Mrs. Loops’s room. Beside it, looking lost and lonely on that long table, lay Mrs. Poovey’s cameo and Emily’s locket.
But there was a great deal more. There were Mrs. Poovey’s paints and her portrait of Clarabelle, Mrs.
Loops’s pen and ink and writing paper, Mr. Dobbs’s whittling knife and his small wood figure of a kitten, Mrs. Quirk’s wool and cross-stitched picture, plus more paints, wool, thread, wood, and all the other pitiful bits and pieces resembling Clarabelle that the old people had been working on so diligently. And there, dangling by the scruff of her tiny neck from Tilly’s rough hand, was Clarabelle herself!
So everything had been discovered. The eyes and ears of Sugar Hill Hall had done their work, and the one to be blamed for it all was Mrs. Plumly. Was it possible that her other terrible secret, the one guarded so carefully by both Mrs. Plumly and Aunt Twice, had been discovered as well?
For a few moments after Aunt Twice and Emily arrived, a deathly silence hung over the parlor. Then Mrs. Meeching’s bloodless, pinched nose flared slightly, releasing one hiss of air for the benefit of all assembled, and her thin lips began to move.
“So you all thought you could get away with something, eh? Well, as you can see, you weren’t nearly so clever as you thought. My walls have eyes, you know.” As if to make certain no one missed this point, Mrs. Meeching’s own eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “I thought you had all learned that here you do as I say, and no use complaining about it to anyone else. You are all only shadows, you know. Nobody sees you or thinks about you, especially the people who have brought you here. They see you even less than anyone else, because they don’t want to see you. And not wanting to see is the most effective kind of blindness, don’t you know?”
Mrs. Meeching paused to fix each old resident of Sugar Hill Hall with a piercing stare. “So in the end, if you wish to complain, you had better complain to me.” This said with all the sincere feeling of a rattlesnake. “As to the matter of punishment, you should all be thrown into the Remembrance Room for these crimes. Because there is one among you, however, whose crimes are so much greater than all the rest, you will be pleased to know that she will pay for all of you.” At this, Mrs. Meeching suddenly drew herself up into a tight tower of rage. Her thin lips gripped her bony teeth, and her eyes became pinpoints of hatred.
“It is the person,” she spit out, “who sneaked this cat into the attics of Sugar Hill Hall and who stealthily crept through the hallways poisoning its inhabitants with a loathesome concoction. It is the person who has grown fat on my bounty, and then repaid the kindness of my warm, generous heart with deceit and ingratitude. And that person, as you may well have guessed, is the conniving, vicious, vile Emily Luccock!”
A moment after the words rang out in the silent, cold, shadowy parlor, there was a loud thump as Mrs. Plumly, her eyes rolled up, fell to the floor in a dead faint. Aunt Twice gasped and clutched her throat. Until the moment Emily’s name was spoken, both ladies must have thought they were the ones to be found guilty of the crimes. But it was Emily, and now the sentence was to be pronounced.
“For this treachery, the orphan brat’s punishment will be: first, that she forfeit the nineteen remaining gold coins that she secretly and treacherously hid in her mattress.” (Those discovered too! thought Emily.) “Second, that her partner in crime, that filthy fishmonger’s boy, shall nevermore set foot in this place. And third, that she shall be locked in the Remembrance Room for twenty-one days, remembering how very good I have been to her, and what an ungrateful, evil child she is. As for the cat,” hissed Mrs. Meeching, “take it out, Tilly, and drown it!”
Clarabelle to be drowned! Everything ended! And herself to be thrown into the Remembrance Room for twenty-one days! Numb with horror, Emily trailed after the tall, icy figure of Mrs. Meeching through the dining room, past the kitchen, down the stairs, up the dark passageway to the dreaded room at the end. A key grated
in a rusty lock. A boneless hand caressed the door to the sound of a long, lingering hiss. The heavy door opened with a groan. A small, trembling body entered the room. The door clanged shut. The key turned again in the lock with a squeal of anguish, and Emily was enclosed in the deepest, darkest, coldest underground tomb of Sugar Hill Hall.
Who could have told the secret of Clarabelle, Kipper’s Pa’s fish syrup, and even the nineteen gold coins? Emily’s brain was too frozen even to think. But there was one thing she did know. When she had passed Tilly at the stairwell dangling poor, doomed little Clara-belle by the scruff of the neck, Emily had caught the distinct, definite, unmistakable breath of PEPPERMINT!
TWELVE
A Midnight Visit
Somewhere, sounding so far off as to come from another world, a clock tolled the hour of twelve. Whether midday or midnight it might have been impossible to tell. The Remembrance Room had no outside windows and allowed only the barest whisper of flickering gaslight through the small square window in the door. Emily knew it to be midnight only because it had been afternoon when she was locked up.
Every bone in her body had begun to ache as she tossed restlessly on the hard wooden bench that served as a bed. She couldn’t stop shivering under the miserably thin coverlet “pervided by the management,” as Kipper would have said. And oh, how she would love to have heard his own voice saying it at that moment! All she had for company were her own grim thoughts drumming endlessly through her tired head, making sleep impossible. Clarabelle drowned. Everything ended. Twenty-one whole days and nights in the Remembrance Room. Clarabelle drowned. Clarabelle drowned. Drowned! Drowned!
How many times this parade of horrors had circled Emily’s brain she had no idea, but the clock had not much more than stopped tolling when through the suffocating darkness she heard someone singing softly. The voice was so close it might almost have been in the same room.
“I’ve come to see you, Emilee,
Emilee, Emilee,
It’s me come back from the Fiddle Dee Dee,
My fair lady!”
Emily scrambled from the bench and stumbled to the door.
“Kipper!”
A brass lantern appeared at the window, lighting up Kipper’s smiling face. “None other!”
“But you’re not supposed to be here!” Emily cried. “You’re supposed to be banished from Sugar Hill Hall.”
“So I been told,” said Kipper cheerfully. “Your aunt told me, and then Tilly told me. And then case my ears weren’t polished up good ’nough to hear all them warnings, the snake lady herself told me. First, o’ course, she had to tell me all ’bout where you was, and why, and for how long. Then she said sweetly, ‘Don’t ever—hisssss— set a foot in Sugar Hill Hall again, vile fishmonger’s boy!’ Thems her exact words.”
“So—so why are you here?” asked Emily.
“Well, so happens I ain’t setting a foot in Sugar Hill Hall. I’m setting two feet, and I ain’t had any warnings ’bout that! Further, though the snake lady’s sly as a fox and mean as a viper, sometimes she ain’t any smarter’n a woolly caterpillar. She forgot all ’bout asking me for this!” Grinning, Kipper held up a brass key for Emily to see.
Despite all that had happened to her, Emily could not help giggling. She giggled and giggled helplessly, but gradually the giggles became gasps for air, and at length became sobs. “Oh Kipper, I’ve been so stupid! I should have listened to you about the fish syrup and Clarabelle. Now the old people are worse off than ever, and Clara-belle has been—has been drowned!” Tears poured down Emily’s cheek.
“I ain’t able to do anything ’bout Clarabelle,” Kipper said, “and I’m sad and sorry for losing that kitten. But I ain’t blaming you for it, nor is Pa, for trying to help the old ones. And it ain’t true that they’re worse off. They all had a touch o’ sunshine in their poor old lives, and who’s to say they ain’t a lot better for it. Here now, take this and dry your eyes, and no more crying ’bout the tuna what took off with the tide, as Pa always says.”
Kipper handed Emily a ragged bit of cloth through the window to serve as a handkerchief. It smelled terribly of fish, but to Emily nothing could have smelled better in the whole world at that moment. She sopped up her eyes and nose and smiled tremulously at Kipper.
“That’s more like it!” said Kipper. “Now, what we got to figger is how everything got told to the snake lady, meaning who done the deed. Not as how we can do much ’bout it now, but best we know who not to tell what to, and who to be extra careful ’round. Could it o’ been one o’ the old ones?”
“Never!” cried Emily.
Kipper shrugged. “One o’ them could o’ spilled a bean accidental like. Then all the rest come tumbling out.”
Emily thought this over. “I—I don’t think so.” Then she said triumphantly, “Not one of the old people knew about my gold coins, or where they were hidden, so it couldn’t have been any of them!”
“Whew!” Kipper wiped his brow. “For the same reason, couldn’t o’ been me either. Good thing I never ’lowed you to tell me ’bout that hiding place. You see how it would o’ been?”
“Kipper!” said Emily indignantly. “I never suspected you, not for a moment. And I never even remembered not telling you about that hiding place—so there!”
“Well, good thing all the same!” Kipper grinned. “Come to think on it, your aunt knew.”
“But she didn’t know anything else,” said Emily. “Besides, you know it couldn’t have been Aunt Twice.”
“Guess I do,” Kipper said. “Well then, how ’bout Mrs. Plumly?”
“She doesn’t know anything at all,” replied Emily.
Kipper scratched his head. “All that’s left then is them mysterious old Sugar Hill Hall eyes and ears everyone’s always going on and on ’bout.”
“Not—not quite all,” said Emily. “There’s—there’s still Tilly.”
“Oh, I never even considered old Til,” said Kipper. “I mean, she ain’t all that perfeck, but she ain’t blackhearted ’nough to do a thing like this. Besides, she didn’t have any knowledge ’bout anything any more’n Mrs. Plumly.”
“She could have,” insisted Emily. “She was snooping about the door the night Aunt Twice and I hid the gold coins. And she just could have caught the old people. You said once there was no one better than Tilly for ferreting out news.”
“True,” admitted Kipper. “But …” He shook his head doubtfully.
“And there’s one more thing,” said Emily. “Don’t you remember those words you sang to me about Tilly telling for peppermints?”
“Yes, but-”
“Well,” Emily interrupted firmly, “when I passed Tilly on the way to being brought down here, I smelled peppermint. And it came from her, Kipper!”
“Dingus!” exclaimed Kipper solemnly. “So ’twas Tilly after all. I never would o’ believed it!”
As dismayed by this discovery as Emily was angered by it, Kipper left soon afterwards, although only because it was too dangerous to stay any longer. And he left with the firm promise of returning the next night with a bottle of fish syrup, which, as Pa always said, strengthened the spirit as well as the appetite. Then darkness closed in on Emily once more.
She had no sooner dropped into a fitful sleep, however, than she heard her name being called out. Somehow it seemed to be woven into a terrible dream she was having.
“Emily! Emily!” the voice said urgently.
She woke up all the way at last, but it took her moments to recover from the dread of remembering where she was. The sound of her name being called, however, did not disappear with her dream. It continued to tremble in the darkness, whispered over and over.
“Emily! Emily!”
Cautiously she looked toward the window in the door, and there in the flickering light of a candle, she saw Tilly’s pale face and flat blue eyes staring at her.
“Go away, Tilly!” said Emily. “You’re a wicked girl!”
“I ain’t no such thin
g!” declared Tilly, her candle wavering dangerously. “And I couldn’t sleep two winks for thinking on how you might believes I told, when I ain’t the one at all!” Tilly sniffled miserably.
“Yes, you are!” cried Emily. “And there’s no use lying about it, because when I passed you in the parlor, I smelled peppermint, Tilly, and I know where it came from!”
At that, Tilly’s candle trembled even more violently. “Don’t say nothing ’bout that to Mrs. Meeching. Promises as how you won’t say nothing, Emily!”
“Why should I promise?” said Emily, who wouldn’t have told Mrs. Meeching anything for her life.
“Because I never earned them peppermints by telling!” Tilly blurted out. “I stoled ’em, Emily! You mights o’ noted how scairt I looked in the parlor. Well, that was ’cause I thoughts as how the whole shebanging meeting was ’bout me!”
Emily studied this a moment. “Well—”
“Please don’t tell!” Tilly pleaded. “Anyways, I can proves I ain’t so wicked as you thinks.”
“How?” asked Emily.
Without a word, Tilly thrust something at Emily through the tiny window in the door. The something was—
“Clarabelle!” Emily cried
Clarabelle! Clarabelle! Clarabelle!
“Oh, Tilly”, breathed Emily, “you didn’t drown her after all!”
“O’ course not!” said Tilly indignantly. “I loves kittens. Cats, too. I wouldn’t never drown no kitten, though it’s worth my life hiding this one. And case you has any doubt further ’bout my feelings, I mights as well tell you I knowed ’bout her all ’long!”
“You didn’t!” exclaimed Emily, burying her face rapturously in the kitten’s soft fur.
“Did, too!” said Tilly. “I didn’t know ’bout them gold coins, but I knowed ’bout the fish syrup from seeing it in your bucket one day, and ’bout what all the old people was doing, too. And I never told. I never did, Emily!”
Peppermints in the Parlor Page 10
