Suddenly, Emily felt her heart leap. As the cab lumbered off into the fog, and Aunt Twice clutched her hand, half dragging her up the wide driveway, she felt as if she wanted to laugh. And laugh and laugh! Now at last she knew what this was all about. It was a magnificent joke! Had Uncle Twice, long ago, not loved to tease and surprise her with his jokes? And had Aunt Twice not always encouraged him with her bubbling laughter? If Sugar Hill Hall was still as grand and beautiful as ever, how could anyone as sad and bedraggled as Aunt Twice be living there? Emily had to choke back the laughter so she would not spoil Aunt and Uncle Twice’s joke. For once inside that great door, she knew what she would find.
There would first, of course, be a joyous Uncle Twice with his arms outstretched to receive her. Behind him would be a welcoming fire popping and crackling in the marble fireplace. Lucy, the maid, would be standing beside it with a gleaming silver tray bearing fine white china cups, thin as eggshells, filled with steaming hot chocolate. Later, all smiles, she would pass crystal dishes heaped with little cream cakes, tiny sandwiches, and Emily’s favorite strawberry tarts. With Aunt and Uncle Twice watching from the silk-covered settee, Emily would curl up on the thick, soft rug before the fireplace, tasting first one thing and then another as Aunt and Uncle marvelled at how her appetite had grown.
Finally, they would all go together to the room where Emily had once stayed, now redone all in white with pink rosebuds to match her own room at home. After they had shed tears over Mama’s and Papa’s photographs, Aunt and Uncle Twice would hug and kiss her, telling her how wonderful it was that she had come to live with them.
Even the strange darkness of the windows, as if no one could possibly be inside the mansion, did not fool Emily. This was, she knew, Uncle Twice’s very best joke!
They reached the steps to the portico, and Aunt Twice paused. “Promise me, Emily, with all your heart, that you will do the things I asked!” Her voice was stretched so tight and thin it was trembling.
“I promise, Aunt Twice!” Emily said happily. She could hardly keep from skipping up the steps.
She watched eagerly as Aunt Twice removed a large brass key from her purse and thrust it into the keyhole of the massive door. A moment later, the door swung open, and they stepped into Sugar Hill Hall. And into a dim, musty, cavernous parlor lit only by four small gas lamps flickering weakly on the walls, with no trace of any fire ever having been laid in the stone-cold fireplace. But Emily barely had time to notice this, because her eyes were instantly riveted to the two figures standing before them, and neither one was a laughing, rollicking, joking Uncle Twice.
Both were women, one plump as a pudding in a lavender, full-skirted dress. All Emily could see of her head, however, was a tiny lace doily set on a crown of greying hair. She kept her face bent over a pair of long knitting needles and was busily plying them as if she had no interest whatsoever in the new arrival. But it was the figure beside her that made Emily’s blood suddenly freeze.
Click! Click! Click! To the curiously grim tune of the knitting needles, her eyes rose slowly up, up, up past the waist of a deadly black skirt, past a gold medallion with a glittering ruby eye in its center, past a high black collar coiled around a white, serpent-thin neck, past a chin sharp as an ice pick, past thin bloodless lips under a pale nose so pinched it seemed air could never pass through it, and arriving finally at the meanest, wickedest, evillest pair of eyes Emily had ever seen in her whole life!
TWO
Shadows in Sugar Hill Hall
The eyes stared at Emily, snake eyes that never moved, and yet she knew they were crawling over her inch by inch. She felt goose bumps of terror rising on her arms and legs.
Click! Click! Click! The needles knitted on, but the parlor beyond was silent, as her velveteen coat, white stockings, and fur hat were examined and measured, not to mention what was inside them. At least one whole row of stitches had clicked by before a verdict was delivered, from lips that barely took the trouble to move.
“She is puny for eleven, Mrs. Luccock!”
Aunt Twice drew in her breath sharply. Her knuckles showed white where she clutched her purse. “I—I don’t understand, Mrs. Meeching. She was such a—a healthy, robust little child. Of course,” she faltered, “it has been a long time since I’ve seen her. I—I had no idea …” Her voiced faded away.
By way of reply, Mrs. Meeching allowed a faint hiss of air to escape her nose.
Of course, the truth was that Emily had never been either healthy or robust. Born too early, which she knew from having overheard Mrs. Leslie whispering to someone once, she had always been frail and fragile as a baby sparrow. And she had always been tiny, so that even at eleven, she looked hardly more than eight. A long parade of physicians had poured bottles of potions and pills down her throat (most of which she had unfortunately poured right back up again), but none of them was able to bring the desired color to her cheeks, or add a quarter inch of extra fat to her thin legs. So although it had indeed been a long time since
