The Body in the Library

The murdered young woman around whom the novel’s central mystery revolves, Ruby Keene is an 18-year-old professional dancer who disappears from the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth after an elderly resident (Conway Jefferson) expresses an interest in adopting her and leaving her most of his money. Ruby, who changed her name from Rosy Legg for professional reasons, spent much of her childhood as a pantomime performer in a series of touring companies with her parents, who were also entertainers. According to Conway, she worked hard at her craft and lived mostly in “cheap lodgings,” but never complained. Conway remembers her as a charming, “unspoilt,” refreshingly natural girl, neither vulgar nor priggish, whose vitality and colorful stories about her rough upbringing he found exotic and enchanting. Ruby’s cousin Josie Turner, however, suggests that she was not very smart, and so got on better with the older residents of the hotel, who were drawn to her less for her conversation than for her youthful energy. Josie, who asked Ruby to fill in for her temporarily as a dancer at the Majestic Hotel, claims that Ruby had ambitions far beyond being an entertainer, and thus deliberately ingratiated herself with the wealthy Conway Jefferson in hopes of inheriting some of his money. Mark Gaskell also voices this suspicion in far uglier terms.

Ruby dies before the novel begins and exists for the reader only in the accounts of other characters, some of which (Josie’s, Mark’s, and Adelaide’s) are markedly hostile, mostly due to the threat she posed to their inheritance. By all accounts, Ruby was physically attractive, with platinum hair and a well-toned body, though Mark and Adelaide claim her “prettiness” was largely an illusion of her heavy makeup. Mark Gaskell’s cruel description of Ruby’s physical attributes (“a thin ferrety little face, not much chin, teeth running down her throat” [108)]) ironically gives Miss Marple a vital clue in exposing his and Josie’s elaborate deception, since the “body in the library” has protruding teeth, not receding ones.

Josephine “Josie” Turner first comes to Miss Marple’s attention when she arrives at St. Mary Meade to identify a body presumed to be that of her missing cousin Ruby. In her late twenties, Josie has been working at the Majestic Hotel as a dancer for three years, and she radiates competence and “good sense.” Unlike her cousin Ruby, she favors unostentatious clothes (a dark suit) and her makeup is tasteful and sparingly applied. What makes her an especially valued member of the hotel staff, besides her accomplished dancing, is her ability to “smooth over” disagreements and keep the residents relaxed and happy. At the same time, the Chief Constable notes, she can be “firm” with people: “[T]here was a distinct touch of the nursery governess about her” (51).

Not until late in the novel does Marple realize the truth: that Josie is a cold-blooded killer who plotted the deaths of two teenage girls, one of them her own cousin. She did this solely to enrich herself and her husband Mark, who stood to lose his £25,000 inheritance to Ruby. Having masterminded the murder plot to the last detail, Josie used her social skills to manipulate people in ways beyond the ability of the bumptious Mark: Her “bright” firmness and charm were no doubt pivotal in gaining the trust of the naïve Pamela Reeves, so she could be murdered and her body disguised as Ruby’s.

Josie’s greed ultimately undoes her. Marple and Conway set a trap for her by announcing an imminent change in Conway’s will. Driven by greed to a desperate act, Josie sneaks into Conway’s room at night with a fatal dose of digitalin. Clever as always, she plans to knock one of the stone balls off his balcony afterward, to make his death look like a fatal heart attack from the shock of the sudden noise. But the police are lying in wait for her, and Josie goes to prison.

Son-in-law of the wealthy Conway Jefferson, Mark Gaskell becomes a leading suspect in the death of Ruby Keene when police discover that the murdered girl stood between him and a large inheritance. At first, Mark seems to exonerate himself with an airtight alibi for the time of Ruby’s murder, but a last-minute plot twist reveals his guilt. A free-spending gambler and compulsive talker, Mark always insists on “speaking [his] mind” (106), and his careless remarks about Ruby’s “ferrety” looks eventually doom him by exposing his and Josie’s elaborate plot. At novel’s end, Miss Marple identifies Mark as the killer of 16-year-old Pamela Reeves, whom he lured to the Majestic Hotel with the promise of a movie audition. After he and Josie drugged Pamela and altered her appearance with hair bleach, makeup, and clothes, Mark took her to Basil Blake’s cottage, where he strangled the Girl Guide as part of a larger plot to murder Ruby Keene. Arrogant, cold-blooded, and noticeably lacking in intelligence or self-control, Mark is incapable of carrying out such an elaborate plot on his own. Instead, his murderous acts were guided step-by-step by the dancer Josie Turner, whom he had secretly married a year earlier.

Mark’s first marriage was to Rosamund Jefferson, whom he (presumably) married for her father’s wealth; penniless before he met her, he soon gambled away the money he inherited after her accidental death. For the next eight years, he lived with his father-in-law, who tolerated his presence only because Rosamund had been “fond” of him, though he secretly felt Mark to be a “rotter.” Meanwhile, Mark secretly married Josie Turner, promising her a big payday once Conway Jefferson passed. However, Conway lived longer than anticipated, and (worse) became infatuated with Josie’s cousin Ruby Keene, whom he planned to make his heiress.

Brashly aggressive but weak-willed, Mark cannot conceal his hatred for Ruby even after her death; saying in front of the police that he wishes he’d “wrung her neck” (105). His violent, cold-hearted remarks, which he tries to pass off as honest directness, raise eyebrows and suspicions; as Marple says later, Mark’s accomplice Josie was by far the stronger and smarter of the two murderers. In fact, Mark’s garrulous tongue becomes his tragic flaw, as his unfiltered appraisal of Ruby’s “teeth running down her throat” (108) alerts Marple to the masquerade he and Josie have played with the Girl Guide’s corpse, whose teeth were quite different.