Lemony Snicket - The Vile Village

Violet yawned. "Speaking of poetry, why don't we talk about Isadora Quagmire's couplets? We still haven't figured out where the triplets are hidden, and besides, if we keep talking it'll be easier to stay awake."

"Good idea," Klaus said, and recited the poems from memory:

"For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes we cannot speak. No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue: An initial way to speak to you. "

The Baudelaires listened to the poems and began to entertain every notion they could think of that might help them figure out what the couplets meant. Violet held the bench in place, but her mind was on why the first poem began "For sapphires we are held in here," when the Baudelaires already knew about the Quagmire fortune. Klaus poured the water out of the pitcher and let it run down to the wall, but his mind was on the part of the poem that said "The first thing you read contains the clue," and what exactly Isadora meant by "the clue." Sunny monitored the loaf of bread as it soaked up the water again and again, but her mind was on the last line of the last poem they had received, and what "An initial way to speak to you" could mean. The three Baudelaires operated Violet's invention until morning, discussing Isadora's couplets the entire time, and although the children made quite a lot of progress dissolving the mortar in the cell wall, they made no progress figuring out Isadora's poems.

"Water might be one of the most powerful forces on earth," Violet said, as the children heard the first sounds of the V.F.D. crows arriving for their uptown roost, "but poetry might be the most confusing. We've talked and talked, and we still don't know where the Quagmires are hiding."

"We need another dose of deus ex machina " Klaus said. "If something helpful doesn't arrive soon, we won't be able to rescue our friends even if we do escape from this cell."

"Psst!" came an unexpected voice from the window, startling the children so much that they almost dropped everything and wrecked the mortar-dissolver. The Baudelaires looked up and saw the faint shape of somebody's face behind the bars of the window. "Psst! Baudelaires!" the voice whispered.

"Who is it?" Violet whispered back. "We can't see you."

"It's Hector," Hector whispered. "I'm supposed to be downtown doing the morning chores, but I sneaked over here instead."

"Can you get us out of here?" Klaus whispered.

For a few seconds, the children heard nothing but the sounds of the V.F.D. crows muttering and splashing in Fowl Fountain. Then Hector sighed. "No," he admitted. "Officer Luciana has the only key, and this jail is made of solid brick. I don't think there's a way I can get you out."

"Dala?" Sunny asked.

"My sister means, did you tell the Council of Elders that we were with you the night Jacques was murdered, so we couldn't have committed the crime?"

There was another pause. "No," Hector said. "You know that the Council makes me too skittish to talk. I wanted to speak up for you when Detective Dupin was accusing you, but one look at those crow hats and I couldn't open my mouth. But I thought of one thing I can do to help."

Klaus put down the pitcher of water and felt the mortar on the far wall. Violet's invention seemed to be working quite well, but there was still no guarantee that it would get them out of there before the mob of citizens arrived in the afternoon. "What's that?" he asked Hector.

"I'm going to get the self-sustaining hot air mobile home ready to go," he said. "I'll wait at the barn all afternoon, and if you somehow manage to escape, you can float away with me "

"O.K.," Violet said, although she had been hoping for something a little more helpful from a fully grown adult. "We're trying to break out of this cell right now, so maybe we'll make it."

"Well, if you're breaking out now, I'd better go," Hector said. "I don't want to get in trouble. I just want to say that if you don't make it and you are burned at the stake, it was very nice making your acquaintance. Oh — I almost forgot."

Hector's fingers reached through the bars and dropped a rolled scrap of paper down to the waiting Baudelaires. "It's another couplet," he said. "It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe you'll find it helpful. Good-bye, children. I do hope I see you later."

"Good-bye, Hector," Violet said glumly. "I hope so too."

'"Bye," Sunny muttered.

Hector waited for a second, expecting Klaus say good-bye, but then walked off without another word, his footsteps fading into the sounds of the muttering, splashing crows. Violet and Sunny turned to look at their brother, surprised that he had not said good-bye, although Hector's visit had been such a disappointment that they could understand if Klaus was too annoyed to be polite. But when they looked at the middle Baudelaire, he did not look annoyed. Klaus was looking at the latest couplet from Isadora, and in the growing light of the Deluxe Cell his sisters could see a wide grin on his face. Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don't care for spill orange soda all over himself. But there weren't any books in the uptown jail, and the Baudelaires had been careful not to spill a drop of the water as they operated the mortar-dissolver, so the Baudelaire sisters knew that their brother was grinning for another reason.

L He was grinning because he was entertaining a notion, and as Klaus showed them the poem he was holding, Violet and Sunny had a very good idea of what notion it was.

Inside these letters, the eye will see

Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D.

Isn't it marvelous?" Klaus said with a grin, as his sisters read the fourth couplet. "Isn't it absolutely superlative?"

"Wibeon," Sunny said, which meant "It's more confusing than superlative — we still don't know where the Quagmires are."

"Yes we do," Klaus said, taking the other couplets out of his pocket.

"Think about all four poems in order, and you'll see what I mean."

For sapphires we are held in here.

Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes we cannot speak.

No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue:

An initial way to speak to you.

Inside these letters the eye will see

Nearby are your friends, and V.F.D.

"I think you're much better at analyzing poetry than I am," Violet said, and Sunny nodded in agreement. "This poem doesn't make it any clearer."

"But you're the one who first suggested the solution," Klaus said. "When we received the third poem, you thought that 'initial' meant 'initials,' like V.F.D."

"But you said that it probably meant 'first,'" Violet said. "The poems are the first way the Quagmires can speak to us from where they are hidden."

"I was wrong," Klaus admitted. "I've never been so happy to be wrong in my life. Isadora meant 'initials' all along. I didn't realize it until I read the part that said 'Inside these letters the eye will see.' She's hiding the location inside the poem, like Aunt Josephine hid her location inside her note, remember?"

"Of course I remember," Violet said, "but I still don't understand."

"The first thing you read contains the clue,'" Klaus recited. "We thought that Isadora meant the first poem. But she meant the first letter. She couldn't tell us directly where she and her brother were hidden, in case someone else got the poems from the crows before we did, so she had to use a sort of code. If we look at the first letter of each line, and we can see the triplets' location."