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A thena stared across her desk at Mrs. Lloyd, whose arms were still folded across her chest, almost as if she were hugging some unseen person or object.

“What else do you want to know about Miss Vernon?” the housekeeper asked quietly.

“Anything you can tell me,” Athena replied, just as quietly. She was anxious to know everything she could about the young woman who had lived in this house, who had slept in the same room where Athena and her sister now slept—and who had been convicted of a horrific crime.

Mrs. Lloyd hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “She was a good child. So was the young master.”

“You’re referring to Mr. Ian Vernon?”

Mrs. Lloyd nodded, her expression softening. “Everyone on staff loved them. Their mother adored them as well. It was a shame she died so young.”

“How old were the children when Mrs. Vernon passed away?”

Mrs. Lloyd stared down at her hands. “Miss Vernon was only two. Master Ian was eight.”

“How sad.” A heaviness descended on Athena’s chest. She had only been six years old when her own mother had died, an absence that still cut her to the core and had been deeply felt by everyone in her family.

Her sister Diana, at the tender age of seven, had stepped in to fill that void, managing the household as best she could, for many years doing more to raise Athena and her sister and brother than their father had been able to manage.

“It is a difficult thing, to be raised without a mother’s love. ”

“It is indeed, Miss Taylor.” If Mrs. Lloyd sensed Athena’s personal experience with the matter, she didn’t remark upon it. “But they didn’t go without affection. Our neighbor Mrs. Hillman went out of her way to befriend those children.”

“Mrs. Hillman?” When Athena and Selena had met her, the woman hadn’t mentioned a connection to the Vernon children. But then, their get-together had been so brief, and the conversation had focused primarily on the attributes of Mrs. Hillman’s former ward, Mr. Chapman.

“Mrs. Hillman never had any children of her own, you see. She took Miss Vernon and Master Ian under her wing, invited them to Darkmoor Park twice a month, and sometimes more, for tea parties and lawn games and such. They always came back with new toys and stacks of books to read.”

“How kind of her.” Athena felt a rising respect for Mrs. Hillman and looked forward to getting to know her better.

“The children, I believe, loved that good woman equally in return. They keenly anticipated every visit. And they did kindnesses for her as well. One time, I’ll never forget it, Master Ian was home on his summer holidays.

I think he was thirteen or so and Miss Vernon was just a wee thing of seven.

They asked me to help them prepare a gift for Mrs. Hillman. ”

“What kind of gift?”

“They wanted to bring her a wheelbarrow full of roses in honor of her birthday. We had plenty of roses in the garden, so I found two pairs of shears and told them to help themselves. But half an hour later, back they came with the wheelbarrow full of buckets of roses and the longest faces you’ve ever seen.

Master Ian said they couldn’t deliver the flowers to Mrs. Hillman that way.

She had a great fear of thorns, he said, and he’d forgotten that roses had so many.

I offered to help them. Master Ian insisted that we remove every thorn from every stem.

The task took the better part of the afternoon.

But we got it done and the children delivered those flowers and told me they were a great success. ”

“What a delightful story.” It surprised Athena to hear about this act of thoughtfulness on the part of a young Ian Vernon. It seemed such a contrast to the angry man to whom she had spoken on the riverbank the other day. “What about their father, Mr. Arthur Vernon? Was he a caring man?”

Mrs. Lloyd paused. “He was, for a time. At least he seemed to be in the early days when things went his way.”

Athena looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“It isn’t for me to say, Miss Taylor. I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead.”

“I understand.” Athena wasn’t about to let it go at that, however. “But what about the early days ? Surely, you can speak of them?”

Mrs. Lloyd conceded with a frown. “Mr. Vernon was decent to those children when they were young. He made sure Master Ian got a good education at Eton and Oxford. Miss Vernon was like a doll to him. He bought her a pony and then a horse, had the prettiest dresses and riding costumes made for her, and took her out riding all the time. When she turned eighteen, he gave her a coming-out ball. People said it was the grandest coming-out ball in the history of the county and Miss Vernon was the prettiest debutante they’d ever seen. But then…”

“Then?” Athena prodded.

“Six months later, Mr. Harold Sinclair asked for permission to marry her, and Mr. Vernon snapped him up just like that.”

“But Miss Vernon didn’t want to marry him?”

“I should say not. She despised the man. And with good reason.”

“What reason, Mrs. Lloyd?”

“That is not for me to say,” the housekeeper said again.

She clamped her mouth shut, then opened it and went on heatedly.

“But Mr. Arthur Vernon had long been infatuated with the Sinclairs and with Woodcroft House. He saw it as a feather in his cap for their two families to be joined. Overnight, Miss Vernon found herself affianced to that horrible man. She told her father that she wouldn’t go through with it.

But he had always claimed he had a weak heart, and he used that to pressure her into giving in, insisting that it would kill him if she didn’t marry Mr. Sinclair.

She wept all day and cried herself to sleep every night.

It nearly broke my heart to see it. The two men agreed to wait until she’d turned nineteen years of age to marry, and they set a date in June.

But a week before the wedding, Mr. Sinclair…

” She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.

“I know Mr. Sinclair was poisoned,” Athena prodded gently. “But where did it happen? And how?”

Mrs. Lloyd swallowed hard, as if to collect herself. “It was at a garden party at Woodcroft House. He keeled over dead right in front of my eyes. They found rat poison in his glass of punch.”

Athena’s hand went to her mouth. “And Miss Vernon was convicted of the crime and hanged for it?”

The housekeeper nodded. “But she didn’t kill that man!” The words shot from her mouth as if from a loaded cannon. “She wouldn’t have even hurt a fly. Miss Vernon was the sweetest, kindest girl who ever drew breath. What happened to her was the crime!”

Athena wanted to offer some soothing or sympathetic words, but before she could speak, Mrs. Lloyd stood abruptly.

“Forgive me, Miss Taylor.” Her voice broke. “I have work to do.” So saying, she quit the room.

Athena sat in silence for a long moment and then added a few more paragraphs to her letter to Diana. She had learned a great many things from this conversation but latched on to the item she considered to be the most important.

Mrs. Lloyd’s assertions fit with Athena’s latest theory: that Caroline Vernon might be innocent of the crime of which she’d been convicted. The crime for which she had paid with her life.

*

“Selena,” Athena remarked on their way to Darkmoor Park for tea on Wednesday afternoon, “I have some new thoughts about Sally Osborn.”

“Are you still worrying about that?”

“I am.” The sky was bright blue, and a breeze fluttered their bonnet ribbons.

Cow parsley grew in the ditches on the side of the road, and sheep baa ed and grazed on the distant moors.

“Miss Osborn insisted that Sally had become a changed person after she quit her job at Woodcroft House. A post she left nine years ago .”

“Nine years ago. Hmm. Apparently, you believe the timing to be significant. Ah. Isn’t that when the infamous murder took place? The one that has cast such a shadow over Thorndale Manor?”

“Precisely. I asked Mrs. Lloyd about it the other night. She confirmed that Sally Osborn came to work at Thorndale Manor right after Harold Sinclair was murdered.”

“Interesting. Go on.”

As they continued down the road, Athena went over everything Mrs. Lloyd had revealed from the childhood of the Vernon siblings and Miss Vernon’s enforced betrothal to Harold Sinclair’s poisoning at a garden party at Woodcroft House. “He died on the spot.”

“Dear lord.” Selena’s nose wrinkled.

“But Mrs. Lloyd insisted that Caroline Vernon couldn’t have possibly murdered him.”

Selena flapped a dismissive hand. “Of course she did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remind me, how long has Mrs. Lloyd worked at Thorndale Manor?”

“As I recall, she’s been here forty years.”

“Forty years! That is dedication. And from what you said, she was very fond of Miss Vernon.”

“Apparently, the entire staff adored both her and her brother.”

“ That is a red flag, Selena.”

“In what respect?” Although Athena could guess the answer.

“If Mrs. Lloyd loved Miss Vernon, of course she would rush to her defense. She would find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Miss Vernon could do something so heinous as to commit murder.”

Athena nodded. “You could be right. It’s a natural instinct to protect the people we love. However, we mustn’t simply accept that Caroline Vernon was guilty. People are wrongly convicted every day. We ought to keep our minds open on the subject.”

“It sounds as if your mind is already made up.” Selena glanced her way. “You still think there’s a connection between Mr. Sinclair’s death all those years ago, and Sally’s death last Friday?”

“I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Sally was a housemaid at Woodcroft House when Harold Sinclair died. She might have seen the person who poisoned Sinclair’s drink. What if it wasn’t Caroline Vernon?”

Selena paused, as if taking that in. “Who else would have had a motive to kill Harold Sinclair?”

“A good question. And one I intend to look into.”