Chapter One They say he killed his first wife."

It was enough to make Lady Olivia Bevelstoke cease stirring her tea. "Who?" she asked, since the truth was, she hadn't been listening.

"Sir Harry Valentine. Your new neighbor."

Olivia took a hard look at Anne Buxton, and then at Mary Cadogan, who was nodding her head in agreement. "You must be joking," she said, although she knew quite well that Anne would never joke about something like that. Gossip was her lifeblood.

"No, he really is your new neighbor," put in Philomena Waincliff.

Olivia took a sip of her tea, mostly so that she would have time to keep her face free of its desired expression, which was a cross between unabashed exasperation and disbelief. "I meant that she must be joking that he killed someone," she said, with more patience than she was generally given credit for.

"Oh." Philomena picked up a biscuit. "Sorry."

"I know I heard that he killed his fiancée," Anne insisted.

"If he killed someone, he'd be in gaol," Olivia pointed out.

"Not if they couldn't prove it."

Olivia glanced slightly toward her left, where, through a thick stone wall, ten feet of fresh springtime air, and another thick wall, this one of brick, Sir Harry Valentine's newly leased home sat directly to the south of hers.

The other three girls followed her direction, which made Olivia feel quite foolish, as now they were all staring at a perfectly blank spot on the drawing-room wall. "He didn't kill anyone," she said firmly.

"How do you know?" Anne responded.

Mary nodded.

"Because he did