The Body in the Library

The Body in the Library, a 1942 whodunnit by Agatha Christie, is the second novel to feature Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple. Christie’s novel leavens its suspenseful story with verbal wit, romance, humor, and social commentary as it explores themes including The Two Sides of Gossip, Social Inequality as a Motive for Deception, and The Contrast Between Appearance and Reality. Widely counted among the finest of Christie’s Marple novels, The Body in the Library has been translated into more than 100 languages and has been filmed twice for British television, in 1986 by the BBC and in 2004 by the ITV network. In 2011, the novel was loosely adapted for the French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie’s Little Murders), which moved its setting from England to France.

This guide refers to the 2022 William Morrow paperback edition of The Body in the Library.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, child death, gender discrimination, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The Bantrys, a wealthy, elderly couple in 1940s England, wake up to the news that a dead body has been found in their library, their favorite room of the house. After the police have been summoned, Dolly Bantry calls up her friend Miss Jane Marple, who lives just down the road in the village of St. Mary Mead. Marple, an elderly, unmarried woman, has shown herself to be a brilliant amateur detective, and Dolly hopes that she can shed light on this mystery before local gossip turns it into a scandal. The victim, who has been strangled, is a girl in her late teens, with platinum blonde hair, heavy makeup, a spangled evening dress, and blood-red fingernails. No one in the household admits to having seen her before, and evidence suggests that she entered the library by way of a jimmied window rather than through the door. The police surgeon estimates the time of death as between 10 o’clock and midnight.

The body matches the description of Ruby Keene, an 18-year-old dancer who went missing the previous night in Danemouth, a seaside resort 18 miles away. Ruby’s older cousin Josie Turner, also a professional dancer, positively identifies the corpse as Ruby’s. Josie can think of no explanation for her cousin’s disappearance or murder, and seems genuinely perplexed that she was found in a rich couple’s house near a village she’d never visited. Both she and Ruby, she says, worked as dancers in the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth, though Ruby had only been there for a month: Josie had invited her to fill in for some of her dancing after she sprained her ankle. Oddly, the hotel guest who reported Ruby missing turns out to be an old friend of the Bantrys. The local police, pursuing this connection, center their investigation on the swanky Majestic Hotel rather than on the quiet village of St. Mary Mead.

Since the hotel is in a different county from St. Mary Mead, Inspector Slack and Chief Constable Colonel Melchett are joined by Superintendent Harper, a Glenshire County police detective. Miss Marple also agrees to accompany her friend Dolly to the Majestic Hotel to aid the investigation. There, she learns that the Bantrys’ acquaintance with the guest who reported Ruby missing, an elderly man named Conway Jefferson, is apparently a coincidence: Jefferson has never been to the Bantrys’ house and purportedly had no idea they lived so close to Danemouth. His connection to Ruby Keene is equally peculiar: He tells the police that, over the past few weeks, he became deeply attached to the dancer and decided to legally adopt her. He also planned to leave her the bulk of his money, a fortune of £50,000. The night before, when she didn’t show up for her scheduled dance at midnight, he became worried; and when, by morning, she still hadn’t returned to the hotel, he called the police.

Jefferson’s family—his wife, son, and daughter—all died eight years ago in a plane crash that also claimed both of Conway’s legs. After that, he became very close to his children’s widowed spouses—Mark Gaskell and Adelaide Jefferson—letting them live rent-free in his house and taking them to the Majestic Hotel for long annual visits. His adoption of Ruby, if it had gone through, would have disinherited Mark and Adelaide; this fact, in the eyes of the law, makes them the leading suspects in her murder. However, they appear to have rock-solid alibis for the night of the murder, as they were seen playing bridge at the hotel with Josie and their father-in-law from about 10:30 pm to midnight. Ruby joined them at their table around 10:40 pm, then went off to dance with a guest, which was the last time anyone at the hotel saw her. Since the coroner set her death as sometime before midnight, it seems impossible that Mark, Adelaide, Josie, or Conway could have had any involvement.

The police and Miss Marple question a few more suspects: Hugo McLean, a longtime suitor of Adelaide Jefferson; Raymond Starr, Josie’s dancing partner; George Bartlett, who danced with Ruby just before her disappearance; and Basil Blake, a rakish young man who lives in St. Mary Mead and has a vague connection to the film industry. None of these leads seems very promising. Then, the plot thickens with the discovery of a burnt-out car in a nearby quarry with a charred body inside. Analysis of a shoe and a button identifies the body as Pamela Reeves, a 16-year-old Girl Guide (equivalent to the Girl Scouts in the US) who disappeared from a Girl Guide rally the night before. Believing the murders of Ruby and Pamela to be related, the police ask Miss Marple to question Pamela’s friends. Marple finds out that Pamela, just before she vanished, was heading to Danemouth for a “film test” with an alleged movie producer.

On this evidence, the police search Basil Blake’s dustbin and find a discarded hearthrug covered with sequins from Ruby Keene’s dress. Discovering that Basil has no alibi for the night in question, they arrest him for the murder of Ruby. Miss Marple, however, insists on his innocence, saying that she knows the identity of the real murderer. With the help of Conway Jefferson and the police, she sets a trap: First, she has Conway tell his in-laws, Mark and Adelaide, that he intends to change his will the next day, to leave his money to a hotel for impoverished young dancers instead of to them. That very night, a stealthy figure sneaks into Conway’s bedroom, wielding a deadly syringe of digitalin. But before the intruder can inject the old man, a policeman jumps out of the shadows and seizes the syringe.

In a final scene, Miss Marple explains how she solved the case. She suspected early on that the body in the library was not that of Ruby Keene; mainly because its fingernails had been bitten short, which seemed out of character for a glamorous professional dancer like Ruby. Then, with the discovery of the burnt-out car and charred body, she realized the truth: Two girls had been murdered that night, and their bodies had been disguised as one another. Pamela Reeves, who was murdered early in the evening, was made up to look like Ruby Keene, and her body was left in Basil Blake’s cottage in order to frame him. However, Basil, coming home drunk, discovered the body and moved it to the Bantrys’ house as a “joke” on Colonel Bantry, whom he disliked. This impulsive act deflected the case, moving the focus of the investigation to the family of the Bantrys’ friend Conway Jefferson—where, coincidentally, it belonged.

As for Ruby herself, she was drugged and murdered in her hotel room sometime after midnight. Soon afterward, her body, dressed in Pamela Reeves’s clothes, was burned in the quarry. Her murderer was her own cousin, Josie Turner. As for motive: Just a day before springing her trap, Miss Marple searched the marriage records at Somerset House and discovered that Josie and Mark Gaskell had been (secretly) married a full year ago. In other words, Josie was not just a hotel dancer, but an heiress to the Jefferson fortune. Almost from the start, Marple had suspected Josie, since she’d clearly lied about the body in the library being Ruby’s. Now, at last, she had the motive: Josie and Mark, not wanting to lose their half of the inheritance to Ruby, plotted her death together. To give themselves an alibi, Mark lured the Girl Guide Pamela Reeves to Josie’s hotel room with the promise of a screen test. There, Josie bleached Pamela’s hair and used makeup and clothes to make her look like Ruby. Then they drugged her, and Mark took her to Basil Blake’s cottage and strangled her. This way, the rakish Basil would get the blame; at the same time, the coroner’s estimate for “Ruby’s” death (between 10 o’clock and midnight) would exonerate Josie and Mark, since they were both seen playing cards at the hotel from 10:30 pm to midnight, and Ruby was still alive and accounted for at 10:40 pm.

With Josie Turner and Mark Gaskell safely in prison, Conway Jefferson admits to Marple and the others that he always thought Mark Gaskell was a “rotter”; the only reason he supported him was out of love for his daughter Rosamund, Mark’s late wife. Equally, he’s begun to feel that Ruby Keene was not the paragon he took her for, and regrets having made such a “fool” of himself over her. His infatuation, he thinks, may have had more to do with her (superficial) resemblance to Rosamund than anything else. At this point, his daughter-in-law Adelaide interrupts to announce her engagement to Hugo McLean, her longtime suitor. Conway gives them his full blessing, and also promises to change his will to leave most of his money to Adelaide’s son from her first marriage, nine-year-old Peter.