Why a Booktrail?
Mid 1900s: A Victorian mansion doubling as a rehabilitation centre..the perfect setting for a Miss Marple mystery
They Do It with Mirrors (Miss Marple)
What you need to know before your trail
An old friend of Miss Marple asks her to go to see Carrie Louise who lives in a Victorian Mansion.There’s something wrong she says but can’t explain what. The building itself is a mansion with a difference as it is also a rehabilitation centre. She’s a bit on edge being in a place like this and when one of the youngster shoots a gun at the administrator Lewis Serrocold. Neither of them are injured but only a few moments away in another part of the building, another man lies dead.
This other man, Mr Gilbrandsen was visiting the centre – but who was he and why was he there? Miss Marple is keen to find out.
Travel Guide
Stonygates – A Victorian building which is dilapidated, falling down, crumbling call it what you will, a building caught in the past which is also a centre for the delinquents of modern times. When Miss Marple gets a request from an old friend suggesting that something is very wrong there, it’s understandable that she’d go straight away to find out what was going on. Lewis Serrocold works as the administrator and has set up the home in the grounds for boys he can look after and try to do some good. But it’s an eerie and disturbing place.
Ruth, Miss Marple and Carrie Louise all have history together. It was the three of them in happier times who took off on a grand adventure in Italy. Oh to have an insight into when Jane was a young girl, in her happy and carefree youth. Cut back to the present and they now meet in a strange victorian mansion which is not the place for any kind of holiday.
The place is the perfect setting for village gossips and for the corridors to have eyes and ears. It seems strange that someone who has offered these boys a second chance should be shot at. Even more so that a visitor should be killed on site. There is more than a few obvious suspects but Miss Marple doesn’t do obvious very well and she starts sniffing around. For once she is on site when the murder happens. Now that is a Miss Marple first!
This estate has more than its fair share of quirks – the estate is a lot more than a detention centre. An on site theatre offers them the chance to put on shows and productions in an attempt to get them interested in doing something creative and constructive. The Title “They Do it With Mirrors’ suggests there is a lot going on behind the scenes.
Where Next?
