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A nother hush descended on the room.

Athena swiveled in her seat to face the girl whose startling remark had stopped the conversation. “Miss Russell, why do you say that?”

Miss Russell shrugged her thin shoulders. “Because of her shoes.”

Athena exchanged a glance with her sister, whose eyebrows were squished together as if to say, What on Earth is she talking about?

“What do you mean, her shoes?” Athena asked.

“Sally always wore the same old black, leather boots to work,” Miss Russell explained.

“She told me she was embarrassed by them because they were so badly scuffed, but she had to wear them because she was on her feet all day. She wasn’t wearing her boots this morning, Miss Taylor.

She had on blue shoes. Very nice slippers that I imagine were her best pair. ”

Athena stared at the girl, the sharp tingling of recognition rippling through her. When she had seen Sally’s body, Athena had felt instinctively that something hadn’t been right. She summoned the image of Sally’s prone and sodden form into her mind’s eye.

Sally had been wearing a cloak and her black maid’s dress.

She hadn’t been wearing a cap or apron, but Athena had noticed that Sally usually hung those items on pegs in the servants’ entry hall, to don upon arrival.

But Miss Russell was right. Sally’s feet had been encased, not in boots, but in a pair of blue shoes.

How did that escape my notice? Athena wondered, annoyed with herself. She had always prided herself on her observational skills, but she had missed a detail that an eight-year-old girl had observed.

Before she could say more, Miss Weaver proclaimed, “I don’t understand. What do Sally’s shoes have to do with murder ?”

“It means that when Sally went down to the river, she wasn’t on her way to work at all,” Miss Russell replied. “She was going to meet someone.”

*

That night, as Athena and Selena undressed for bed in the chamber they shared, Miss Russell’s assertion still lingered in Athena’s mind.

When they had moved to Thorndale Manor, Athena and her sister had given a great deal of thought to the selection of their bedchamber.

Growing up, they had always shared a room, and during the years that they had served as governesses, they had missed each other dearly.

Even though Thorndale Manor had plenty of bedrooms from which to choose, they were grateful to once again enjoy each other’s companionship as chamber mates.

The obvious choice of room would have been the one that had belonged to the former master of the house, the patriarch and widower Arthur Vernon. But that chamber was too dark, and its furnishings were too masculine for their taste.

The bedroom that had been occupied by the son and heir, Ian Vernon, had been stripped bare. The budget to prepare the house for their school had not been large enough to redecorate either chamber, and they hadn’t wanted to ask Captain Fallbrook for more.

They had, however, fallen in love at first sight with the room that had once belonged to Caroline Vernon.

The idea that a murderess had once slept there had been a bit daunting—at first. But the room had apparently been sitting empty for nine years, and its charm and suitability had quickly overcome any objections.

A large bay window, framed by dark-pink satin draperies, overlooked the rear courtyard and gardens.

The wallpaper featured pink roses intertwined with trailing leaves and songbirds.

The furniture was perfect and not too fussy: a carved mahogany dresser and wardrobe, a small desk and chair, and instead of the usual four-poster bed, two smaller beds separated by a night table.

All of Miss Vernon’s personal effects had been removed, and the housekeeper had seen to it that the chamber had been cleaned and dusted on a regular basis.

Upon settling in, Athena and Selena had felt at home there from the first moment. And thankfully—as Selena was wont to point out—they had never been visited by Miss Vernon’s angry spirit.

“Do you think she’s right?” Athena asked as she hung her frock in the wardrobe.

“Do I think who is right?” Selena sat on the edge of her bed, taking off her shoes and stockings.

“Miss Russell. I am still pondering her remarks. Do you think it’s possible that Sally Osborn was on her way to meet someone at the riverbank?”

“What I think is that Miss Russell has an overactive imagination.”

“Does she? Or is she uncommonly perceptive?”

Selena laughed as she slipped into her white, cotton nightdress. “She reminds me of us when we were her age.”

“She does.” Athena put on her own nightgown and began unpinning her hair. “Only think how much trouble we must have given poor Father.” She smiled at the memory, recalling how she, Selena, and their sister, Diana, had looked for mysteries everywhere as children.

It had all stemmed from advice their mother had given them. Although that good woman had departed this life more than twenty-three years ago, when Selena and Athena had been only five and six years of age, they had never forgotten their mother’s favorite maxim.

Where there is smoke, there’s fire.

“If you hear a rumor or see signs that something is amiss,” Mama used to warn them, “it is probably true.”

Mama had named them all after goddesses, and their brother, Damon, after a Greek legend, insisting that they were each smart, special, and powerful, and that they could achieve whatever they set out to do in life.

The sisters had accepted this as a profound truth, for what mother would prevaricate to her own children?

Their chosen outlet for these “talents” had been mystery-solving, a pursuit into which they had thrown themselves with fervor, delighting in the possibility of discovering hidden truths in even the most innocuous of circumstances.

Damon hadn’t shared their “predilection for detection,” as he’d called it. So, they had formed a girls-only society and called it the “Sisterhood of Smoke and Fire.”

“Very few of our ‘investigations’ turned up any great discoveries,” Selena reminded her, picking up her brush from the dresser and running it through her long, blonde hair.

“Some did.” Athena brushed her own dark-auburn locks. “We found Mrs. Phillips’s lost emerald ring, remember? And what about the rector’s runaway dog?”

“That’s right! We must have visited more than a dozen houses in the neighborhood looking for him. Then I remembered that old Mrs. Fleming had asked for a big bone at the butcher shop, even though she never made soup.”

“Very clever of you.” Athena gave her sister a grin. “And there the animal was—fat and happy and living with old Mrs. Fleming, who refused to give him up.” They shared a laugh.

“We had such fun in those days.”

“We did.” Athena looked at her. “And it’s not over. You haven’t forgotten our promise to Diana, have you?”

“No, but—” Selena began.

“Diana almost died, pursuing hidden truths at Pendowar Hall. We promised to honor her bold quest and fearless disregard for risk, and to follow in her footsteps.” Athena paused, hairbrush in hand.

“I like the new name we gave ourselves: the Audacious Sisterhood of Smoke and Fire. And I meant what we said—that we would seek the truth and never back down.”

“I meant it, too.” Selena shrugged her shoulders. “But only when there’s a truth that needs seeking—or a mystery that needs solving.”

“We might have one! The parish constable believes that Sally Osborn was on her way to work this morning when she slipped and fell. But Miss Russell brought up an interesting point. Sally wasn’t wearing her work boots.”

Selena began braiding her hair. “Maybe Sally decided to wear her best shoes to work for a change.”

“Why would she have done that?”

“Miss Russell said that Sally was embarrassed by her boots.”

“Yes, but…” Athena slowly wove her own hair into two long plaits.

“It rained last night. Even if Sally did decide to wear her best shoes to work, why would she have taken the river path, knowing that her shoes would be ruined by walking in all that mud? It makes no sense.” Athena paused. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless Sally went down to the river path before the rain.”

“‘Before the rain’?” Selena seemed to be mulling this over. “But it rained in the middle of the night. The patter on the windowpanes woke me, and I heard the hall clock strike three o’clock.”

“I remember that too.” Excitement rose in Athena’s chest. “And I’ve just remembered something else. Miss Osborn told me that when she woke up, she was worried because Sally wasn’t in her bed. She said the same thing to Mr. Vernon.”

“When did you speak to Mr. Vernon?”

“At the riverbank. He’s the one who summoned the parish constable.”

“You failed to mention that when you told the story.”

Athena blew out a frustrated breath. Every time she recalled her conversation with Mr. Vernon, it made her blood boil. “I didn’t want to bother you about it.”

“Bother me? I don’t follow.”

“That man has a grudge against me, Selena, for being the new owner of Thorndale Manor. He was intolerably rude to me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Selena’s mouth curved downward. “I suppose that would explain why we have seen so little of him since we moved here. And why he was so curt the day the vicar introduced us.”

“Yes.” Athena paced back and forth beside her bed.

“But to get back to my point. What if we’re wrong about the time that Sally went down to the riverbank?

What if the reason Sally wasn’t in her bed this morning was because she snuck out of the house last night , while her father and sister were sleeping? ”

Selena climbed into her bed. “As Miss Russell said… to meet someone?”

“Yes.” Athena slid beneath her own counterpane, shivering as the cold, linen sheets came in contact with her bare legs. “Why else would she have put on her best shoes? Unless she wanted to spruce herself up a bit and look less like a working woman, for whomever she was going to meet?”