Death Through the Looking Glass by Richard; Forrest

usual traveling outfit?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Beatrice. My crinoline is wrinkled, and the white gloves are dusty.”
    â€œOh, boy,” Lyon said under his breath.
    â€œI suppose Lyon and I are of a different generation,” Bea said.
    â€œI think some people age faster than others, don’t you?”
    Lyon cringed back against the headrest as Bea accelerated the car to over seventy.
    At the airport security gate, Robin threw her arms around Lyon and kissed him. She formally shook hands with Bea before turning to pass through the arched metal detector and down the ramp toward her flight.
    Bea took Lyon’s arm and turned him away from the gate. “Come on, lover. There’s a murder to investigate—and right now there’s nothing I’d like more than a murder investigation.”
    â€œDo I detect an emphasis on a particular word?”
    The Giles home was a large white colonial with black shutters, off the Murphysville green. On the right-hand side of the second story was a small plaque which read “Circa 1760.” As they started up the walk, the front door opened and Cannon Braemer Long bustled out.
    He nodded at Bea and Lyon in passing. “Terrible thing. Terrible,” he muttered as he turned down the street toward the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.
    Before the chimes had faded away, the front door was opened by a small black woman in a dark uniform and white apron. “Miz Wentworth, Mista’ Wentworth.”
    â€œGood evening, Hattie. Can we speak with Mrs. Giles?”
    â€œShe’s in the bed. I’ll fetch her. Y’all go in the living room.”
    â€œThat’s the best act since Butterfly McQueen,” Lyon said as they walked into the living room.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThe actress who played the hysterical maid in Gone with the Wind .”
    The room was as Lyon had expected. The beamed ceiling, wide hearth with nearby spinning wheel, and the clean functional lines of colonial period furniture created the obvious effect, and yet he had the inchoate feeling that it didn’t fit.
    The maid stood in the doorway with a handkerchief held to her mouth, which muffled her words. “Miz Giles be down soon.”
    â€œThank you.”
    As Hattie crossed conspiratorially toward Bea, the handkerchief disappeared somewhere up a sleeve. “Bea, will you be seeing Kim?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œPlease inform her that the literature has arrived from New York and the meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow evening.”
    Lyon stared at his wife as the black woman left the room. “What’s all that about?”
    â€œI have the feeling that Kim is in the process of organizing a union of domestic workers. I had better see whether she’s in violation of the state’s little Hatch Act.”
    â€œYou’ve begun to turn into a bureaucrat since you got that job.” He walked toward the mantelpiece to admire an excellent scale replica of the Mayflower . As he did so, one hand brushed against the wall, and he turned to tap lightly against the wallboard. He looked down at his feet, on the edge of a throw rug on the highly waxed flooring.
    Several years before, the Wentworths had purchased the decrepit house on the promontory and named it Nutmeg Hill. Room by room, as their finances allowed, they had restored the structure. Each peg, each section of plaster, had become as familiar to Lyon as his own face in the morning mirror.
    This house was not of that ilk. In fact, nothing in the house was as it seemed: from a caricature of a maid who dropped her obsequiousness at will, to plasterboard walls and floor planking laid closer to 1960 than to 1760. He ran his fingers along the under edge of the cobbler’s bench coffee table and felt machine-milled nails and belt-sanded wood. Not only the house but also the furniture and probably the plaque on the outside wall were reproductions … the ultimate compromise between a