One of her most famous books. I really liked it. I like to see Miss Marple in her territory :-) so we meet again Colonel Melchett and Inspector Slack (who is very similar to that Flannery I recently read about in the Charlie Chan book) as well as Sir Henry Clithering. I like sir Henry because he never takes Miss Marple for 'just an old woman with too much imagination'. We also meet again other people of St. Mary Mead, like Dolly and Arthur Bantry, her dear friends, or the vicar Clement and his wife Griselda: they now have a baby: David! I'm glad, I like Griselda very much. Here she has a little role, but adorable.
The story starts at Gossington Hall, where Colonel Bantry and his wife get woken up with the strange news that "there's a body in the library". Dolly calls Miss Marple asking for her help, because she wants this problem to be sorted out as soon as possible. She knows what will happen otherwise: the 'good' people talking, the gossip: people would speculate that the colonel knew the girl, that he certainly behaved inappropriately for a married man of his position, maybe even that he himself killed her. So miss Marple helps her and gets to the truth.
Spoilers. There are many many characters: young dancer Ruby Keene -real name Rosy Legge- and 16 years old student Pamela Reeves are the victims; Basil Black and his woman Dinah Lee, with their bad reputation living as they are in a little village like that; Josephine "Josie" Turner, Ruby's cousin that worked with her at the Majestic; old Conway Jefferson, who lost his legs in the same accident that killed his wife Margaret, his son Frank and his daughter Rosamund; Mark Gaskell, his son-in-law; Mrs Jefferson, his daughter-in-law; Peter, her 9 years old child from her first marriage (a cute little thing who likes to read crime novels and said he already has the signatures of authors "Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Dickson Carr and H.C. Bailey" :lol:
Harper, another policeman, much nicer that Slack; George Bartlett, a useless guy that danced with Ruby the night she disappeared; Raymond Starr, that teaches tennis and dance at the Majestic; Hugo McLean, forever in love with Mrs Jefferson.
Josie recognizes the body as being her cousin Ruby. Conway had been so charmed by Ruby that wanted to adopt her legally, and leave her a lot of money in his will; Pamela's body was found burned in a car with her clothes, and the police knew it was her because the few things not burned belonged to her, and I thought: that's a bit superficial, isn't it? But after all this book is from 1941, I think, so they probably had to do with what they could.
Miss Marple looked at the first body's nails, and saw their bad conditions, and thought 'this girl eats her nails', like young girls do (well, when I'm really nervous I still do it..)
She thought that they only had Josie's word that it was Ruby... Miss Marple unmasked her whole plan: Josie had married Mark Gaskell a year ago and at Mr Jefferson's death he would have inherited, but now Ruby was to take that money away, so they used poor Pamela to give themselves an alibi. They disguised her as Ruby and then he killed her and brought her to Basil's house when everybody could see Ruby alive, then a very drunk Basil brought the body to the old Colonel's house. Josie killed Ruby and burned her body. Miss Marple set a final trap. Conway told them that the day after he was going to change his will giving Ruby's part to charity, so when Josie tried to kill him the police stopped her.
I loved Miss Marple explanation of how she had guessed that Basil and Dinah were actually married: they fight a lot, and Miss Marple says that only married coulples can fight without fear of consequences. Without that legal bond people are more careful, fearing to ruin/end something, so never fight seriously, while married couples can enjoy their fights as they enjoy making up.
This is so true, I thought that myself. Not about the books' characters, but about life. So absolutely true.
About the book, I also liked the ending, when Mrs Jefferson went to Conway with Hugo to bravely tell him she intended to marry him... and instead of getting angry he said he would have changed his will leaving all to Peter, and she was so happy :-) nice ending, I like when she ends on a happy note, after so much evilness..
In the book Melchett refers to the murder at the vicarage case, while sir Henry remembers that other case when Miss Marple gave him on a piece of paper the name of the murderer, asking him to prove it. I don't recall which one was that... damn my memory!
ITA: C'è un cadavere in biblioteca
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