The Body in the Library

Miss Marple, Mrs. Bantry, Sir Henry Clithering, and Adelaide Jefferson join Mark Gaskell on the hotel terrace, and together they discuss Ruby Keene. Adelaide says that she “of course” didn’t like Ruby, and Mark describes her bluntly as a “gold-digger” who’d “got her hooks into Jeff all right” (104). Sir Henry, who has never liked or trusted the garrulous Mark Gaskell, winces at his “indiscreet” remarks. Mark hints that Adelaide ignored his warnings about Ruby until it was too late for them to “do something” about her, and says he now wishes he’d “wrung” Ruby’s neck. As Adelaide lightly scolds him, Mark says he always speaks his mind, adding that the “nitwitted” Ruby was only doing what comes naturally to her type, and that they themselves were to blame for not stopping her sooner.

Adelaide brings up Peter Carmody, her nine-year-old son by her first husband, who (she hints) deserves more consideration from her father-in-law. The conversation moves to Ruby’s looks, which Mark says was largely an illusion of her makeup, as otherwise she was “ferrety,” with “not much chin, teeth running down her throat, nondescript sort of nose” (108). He avers that Conway may have been attracted to the “artificial” coloring of her bleached hair and cosmetics, which gave her a “spurious” resemblance to his daughter Rosamund, Mark’s late wife.