Death Wore Gold Shoes — Lucile Vernon Stevens

Carolyn Mathis had come to live with the DeSantlers in their big old mansion in a deep-south town after her entire family was killed in a boating accident. Carolyn had visited here often as a child; her mother had been reared by Miss Edna Mary.

The DeSantlers were a very old family, being descended from the first Revel de Sainte-Aulaire in this country, but few of the DeSantlers were left now.

There were:
Miss Edna Mary, a tiny woman with soft white curls--Miss Edna Mary had a married name, but no one ever thought of her as anything but a DeSantler;

Paul DeSantler, Miss Edna Mary's brother, long a widower, now writing a history of grain, with Carolyn as his secretary;

Anna Max, who had married Revil DeSantler, but who had never been accepted as a real DeSantler;

Courtney, Revel's son and Ann Max's stepson, now engaged to Carolyn;

Hilary, Miss Edna Mary's and Paul's nephew, who had been summoned home by Carolyn because of some mysterious goings-on at the old DeSantler house.

Tall, aristocratic-looking Hilary had a tendency to scoff at Carolyn's fears at first...but when Uncle Paul died under suspicious circumstances and Anna Max was seen with Jim Willis, Hilary began to pay attention to the girl and to try to find a pattern in what was happening. Could it all go back to the death of beautiful Lemoyne Willis, with who Courtney had gone for a time, and who had died under mysterious circumstances, although it had been called a "suicide?"

And had Lemoyne Willis been wearing gold-colored slippers when she died? It was suddenly very important to Hilary and Carolyn that they know.

Mrs. Stevens' story builds up gradually. The romantic old DeSantler house becomes as familiar to the reader as his own home and his sympathy for the DeSantlers makes them very real to him--his sympathy, that is, for all of them but Anna Max, who remains an outsider until the end, although she has a deep and passionate feeling for the old house. The manner in which it is told makes all the more dramatic the climax of Death Wore Gold Shoes, when all the pieces of a baffling puzzle fall neatly into place.