The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events 7)

"That's enough out of you," Officer Luciana said, clasping her white-gloved hand over Jacques's mouth.

"Pipit!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Wait!" but Officer Luciana either didn't listen or didn't care, and she quickly dragged Jacques out the door before he could say another word. The townspeople rose up in their folding chairs to watch him go, and then began talking among themselves as the Council of Elders left the bench. The Baudelaires saw Mr. Lesko share a joke with the Verhoogen family, as if the entire evening had been a jolly party instead of a meeting sentencing an innocent man to death. "Pipit!" Sunny shrieked again, but nobody listened. His eyes still on the floor, Hector took Violet and Klaus by the hand and led them out of Town Hall. The handyman did not say a word, and the Baudelaires didn't, either. Their stomachs felt too fluttery and their hearts too heavy to even open their mouths. As they left the council meeting without another glimpse of Jacques or Officer Luciana, they felt a pain even worse than that of jumping to conclusions. The children felt as if they had jumped off a cliff, or jumped in front of a moving train. As they stepped out of Town Hall into the still night air, the Baudelaire orphans felt as if they would never jump for joy again.

Chapter Seven

In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or in the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary, which is where the Baudelaire orphans found themselves that night. Finding yourself in a quandary means that everything seems confusing and dangerous and you don't know what in the world to do about it, and it is one of the worst unpleasantries you can encounter. The three Baudelaires sat in Hector's kitchen as the handyman prepared another Mexican dinner, and compared with the quandary they were in, all their other problems felt like the small potatoes he was chopping into thirds.

"Everything seems confusing," Violet said glumly. "The Quagmire triplets are somewhere nearby, but we don't know where, and the only clues we have are two confusing poems. And now, there's a man who isn't Count Olaf, but he has an eye tattooed on his ankle, and he wanted to tell us something about our parents."

"It's more than confusing," Klaus said. "It's dangerous. We need to rescue the Quagmires before Count Olaf does something dreadful, and we need to convince the Council of Elders that the man they arrested is really Jacques, otherwise they'll burn him at the stake."

"Quandary?" Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "What in the world can we do about it?"

"I don't know what we can do about it, Sunny," Violet replied. "We spent all day trying to figure out what the poems meant, and we tried our best to convince the Council of Elders that Officer Luciana made a mistake." She and her siblings looked at Hector, who had certainly not tried his best with the Council of Elders but instead had sat in his folding chair without saying a word.

Hector sighed and looked unhappily at the children. "I know I should have said something," he told them, "but I was far too skittish. The Council of Elders is so imposing that I can never say a word in their presence. However, I can think of something that we can do to help."

"What is it?" Klaus asked.

"We can enjoy these huevos rancheros," he said. "Huevos rancheros are fried eggs and beans, served with tortillas and potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce."

The siblings looked at one another, trying to imagine how a Mexican dish would get them out of their quandary. "How will that help?" Violet asked doubtfully.

"I don't know," Hector admitted. "But they're almost ready, and my recipe is a delicious one, if I do say so myself. Come on, let's eat. Maybe a good dinner will help you think of something."

The children sighed, but nodded their heads in agreement and got up to set the table, and curiously enough, a good dinner did in fact help the Baudelaires think of something. As Violet took her first bite of beans, she felt the gears and levers of her inventing brain spring into action. As Klaus dipped his tortilla into the spicy tomato sauce, he began to think of books he had read that might be helpful. And as Sunny smeared egg yolks all over her face, she clicked her four sharp teeth together and tried to think of a way that they might be useful. By the time the Baudelaires were finishing the meal Hector had prepared for them, their ideas had grown and developed into full-fledged plans, just as Nevermore Tree had grown a long time ago from a tiny seed and Fowl Fountain had been built recently from someone's hideous blueprint.

It was Sunny who spoke up first. "Plan!" she said.

"What is it, Sunny?" Klaus asked.

With a tiny finger covered in tomato sauce, Sunny pointed out the window at Nevermore Tree, which was covered in the V.F.D. crows as it was every evening. "Merganser!" she said firmly.

"My sister says that tomorrow morning there will probably be another poem from Isadora in the same spot," Klaus explained to Hector. "She wants to spend the night underneath the tree. She's so small that whoever is delivering the poems probably won't spot her, and she'll be able to find out how the couplets are getting to us."

"And that should bring us closer to finding the Quagmires," Violet said. "That's a good plan, Sunny."

"My goodness, Sunny," Hector said. "Won't you be frightened spending all night underneath a whole murder of crows?"

"Therill," Sunny said, which meant "It won't be any more frightening than the time I climbed up an elevator shaft with my teeth."

"I think I have a good plan, too," Klaus said. "Hector, yesterday you told us about the secret library you have in the barn."

"Ssh!" Hector said, looking around the kitchen. "Not so loud! You know it's against the rules to have all those books, and I don't want to be burned at the stake."

"I don't want anyone to be burned at the stake," Klaus said. "Now, does the secret library contain books about the rules of V.F.D.?"

"Absolutely," Hector said. "Lots of them. Because the rule books describe people breaking the rules, they break Rule #108, which clearly states that the V.F.D. library cannot contain any books that break any of the rules."

"Well, I'm going to read as many rule books as I can," Klaus said. "There must be a way to save Jacques from being burned at the stake, and I bet I'll find it in the pages of those books."

"My word, Klaus," Hector said. "Won't you be bored reading all those rule books?"

"It won't be any more boring than the time I had to read all about grammar, in order to save Aunt Josephine," he replied.

"Sunny is working to save the Quagmires," Violet said, "and Klaus is working to save Jacques. I've got to work to save us."

/> "What do you mean?" Klaus asked.

"Well, I think Count Olaf must be behind all this trouble," Violet said.

"Grebe!" Sunny said, which meant "As usual!"

"If the town of V.F.D. burns Jacques at the stake," Violet continued, "then everyone will think Count Olaf is dead. I bet The Daily Punctilio will even have a story that says so. It will be very good news for Olaf — the real one, that is. If everyone thinks he's dead, Olaf can be as treacherous as he likes, and the authorities won't come looking for him."

"That's true," Klaus said. "Count Olaf must have found Jacques — whoever he is — and brought him into town. He knew that Officer Luciana would think he was Olaf. But what does that have to do with saving us?"

"Well, if we rescue the Quagmires and prove that Jacques is innocent," Violet said, "Count Olaf will come after us, and we can't rely on the Council of Elders to protect us."

"Poe!" Sunny said.

"Or Mr. Poe," Violet agreed. "That's why we'll need a way to save ourselves." She turned to Hector. "Yesterday, you also told us about your self-sustaining hot air mobile home."

Hector looked around the kitchen again, to sure no one was listening. "Yes," he said, "but I think I'm going to stop work on it. If the Council of Elders learns that I'm breaking Rule #67, I could be burned at the stake. Anyway, I can't seem to get the engine to work."

"If you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at it " Violet said. "Maybe I could help finish it. You wanted to use the self-sustaining hot air mobile home to escape from V.F.D. and the Council of Elders and everything else that makes you skittish, but it would also make an excellent escape vehicle."

"Maybe it could be both," Hector said shyly, and reached across the table to pat Sunny on the shoulder. "I very much enjoy the company of you three children, and it would be delightful to share a mobile home with you. There's plenty of room in the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, and once we get it to work we could launch it and never come down. Count Olaf and his associates would never be able to bother you again. What do you think?"