They Do It with Mirrors

Book excerpt: Stonygates had been built originally as a kind of Temple to Victorian Plutocracy - Philanthropy had made of it a home for Juvenile Deliquents. Over the entrance were inscribed the words "Recover Hope All Ye Who Enter Here". But Miss Jane Marple came to Stonygates in fulfilment of a promise to an old school friend to find out what was wrong at this most unusual college, now being run by the friend's third husband and housing, besides two hundred juvenile deliquents, the stepchildren of her previous marriages. As soon as she arrived Jane Marple knew thet her friend was right: something was wrong at Stonygates. What she saw around her was illusion, not reality. In the words of the conjuror "They do it with mirrors" But who? And why?