I rang the bell. I could hear it echo through the house. In due course, the door was opened by a black maid in a white uniform like a nurse's aide's. I wanted to fall into her arms and be dragged off to the infirmary, my feet hurt so bad, but I mentioned my name instead and murmured that Bobby Callahan expected me.

"Yes, Miss Millhone. Won't you come in, please?"

She stepped aside and I moved into the hallway. The ceiling in the entryway was two stories high, light filtering down through a series of windows that followed the line of the wide stone stairs curving up to the left. The floor was tile, a soft red, polished to a satiny sheen. There were runners of Persian carpeting in faded patterns. Tapestries hung from ornamental wrought-iron rods that looked like antique weaponry. The air temperature was perfect, cool and still, scented by a massive floral arrangement on a heavy side table to my right. I felt like I was in a museum.

The maid led me down the hallway to a living room so large the group of people at the far end seemed constructed on a smaller scale than I. The stone fireplace must have been ten feet wide and a good twelve feet high, with an opening big enough to roast an ox in. The furniture looked comfortable; nothing fussy or small. The couches, four of them, seemed substantial, and the chairs were large and overstuffed, with wide arms, reminding me somehow of first-class seats on an airplane. There was no particular color scheme and I wondered if it was only the middle class that ran out and hired someone to make everything match.

I caught sight of Bobby and, mercifully, he lumbered in my direction. He had apparently divined from my expression that I was ill-prepared for this whole pageant.

"I should have warned you. I'm sorry," he said. "Let me get you a drink. What would you like? We've got white wine, but if I tell you what it is, you'll think we're showing off"

"Wine is perfect," I said. "I'm crazy about the show-off kind."