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
