Body in the library

• Jane Marple
• Pelk is constable of St. Mary Mead.
• Slack is a police officer.
• Melchett is a police colonel, county chief constable, and friend of Colonel Bantry.
• Arthur Bantry - retired colonel, owner of the house in which the body was found.
• Dolly Bantry is the wife of Colonel Bantry, one of Miss Marple's friends.
• Basil Blake is a young man who recently settled in St. Mary's Mead, where his mother used to live. The filmmaker. He is married, but this is not known in the village - he and his wife impersonate a pair of lovers to keep the villagers at a distance.
• Josephine Turner - the cousin of the murdered.
• Conway Jefferson is an elderly businessman who, in the past, lost his daughter and son in a disaster, and remained disabled (moves in a wheelchair). Nevertheless, he remains a successful and very wealthy businessman.
• Mark Gaskell is Jefferson’s son-in-law.
• Adelaide Jefferson - Jefferson's sister-in-law
• Pete - Adelaide's son from his first marriage

The spouses of Bantry were awakened in the morning by excited servants - the maid found in the library the corpse of a young blonde in an evening dress! The murdered woman is not familiar to anyone in the house how she got there - it is decidedly incomprehensible. Arriving police begins an investigation. Mrs. Bantry invites Miss Marple to look at the scene, hoping that she will find a clue.

Killed - Ruby Keane, a dancer from the Majestic Hotel, half an hour from St. Mary Mead. The body is identified by a cousin, Josephine Turner (Josie), who works there. Having established the identity of the murdered woman, the police begin an investigation at Majestic, and Miss Marple and Mrs. Bantry are sent there. It turns out that the elderly financier Jefferson, who lives in a hotel with his son-in-law, daughter-in-law and younger grandson, was imbued with Ruby sympathy and decided to bequeath her part of his fortune, so that the relatives who lost part of the inheritance, the girl's death was beneficial. However, on the last night, Ruby danced at Majestic, and after she left, all the suspects sat in the hall for cards before midnight, in front of many witnesses. According to the doctor, Ruby died before midnight, so that Jefferson's family has an undeniable alibi .

The police investigation switches to searching for a “filmmaker,” with whom, according to Josie, Ruby was familiar. Basil Blake, who lives in St. Mary's Mead and was in Majestic, is under suspicion. Meanwhile, police find the body of high school student Pamela Reeves, who disappeared on the day of Ruby’s death (having gone to London with friends, she decided to go shopping alone and did not return home in the evening). The charred corpse, which can only be identified by its things, is found in a quarry on the road between the Majestic and St. Mary Mead, in a burnt car that was stolen the same night from the hotel.

Police secretly take samples from Basil Blake’s car and find in the back seat the sequins from Ruby Keen’s dress. Basil claims that on the night of the murder he returned from the party very drunk and found Ruby already dead in his house, on the carpet in front of the fireplace. Frightened, he decided to get rid of the body: he took it out in the car, drove up to Bantry's house, broke open the library window, threw Ruby's body on the floor and drove home. The police believe that Blake killed Ruby Keane for personal reasons, and Pamela Reeves was killed because, returning from London, she was an involuntary witness to the murder.

Miss Marple is not satisfied with these explanations. The strange words spoken by Josie after her identification, Ruby Keen's nails biting her, and the cheap evening dress obviously inappropriate for a night walk, in which the murdered woman was wearing, do not give her peace. She continues to look for a killer among Jefferson's relatives. Having talked with classmates of Pamela Reeves, she reveals a close friend of the murdered woman, with whom she shared a secret: it turns out, Pamela was invited to act in films and offered to undergo film screenings; it was there that she went alone before disappearing.

In a conversation with Blake’s wife, Miss Marple guesses that if one of the suspects secretly married Jefferson, then his or her wife or husband, without a visible motive for the murder, becomes an interested party. Verification shows that the cousin of the murdered, Josie, did indeed secretly marry Jefferson's son-in-law, Mark Gaskell. They organized the murder of Ruby Keen. The killers had previously found Pamela, resembling Ruby, and lured her to alleged “movie screenings” at the hotel. The girl was offered to change into Ruby's dress, made up for greater resemblance, then slipped a drug. The intoxicated Pamela was transported to Blake's empty house and strangled there. It was her body that was found and then thrown into the Bantry house by the drunken Blake. The real cousin Ruby was killed after midnight, the body with things Pamela was taken out and burned.

They hoped that Blake, having found the corpse, would call the police, and suspicions would immediately fall on him. It was obvious that Josie, as the closest relative, would be asked to identify the body, and she would be able to “identify” the made-up Pamela as Ruby, without arousing suspicion. Thanks to the change of body, the police will be convinced that Ruby was killed before midnight, when Gaskell and Josie were in front of everyone, and the killers would be beyond suspicion. Blake's drunken trick confused the cards of criminals - the corpse was not at all where it was planned, and the police immediately began an investigation at the hotel. No wonder Miss Marple drew attention to the fact that after the "identification" of the corpse of her cousin, Josie looked not so much upset as surprised and annoyed.

The crime is uncovered, but there is no evidence against criminals. To bring the killers to justice, Miss Marple tells her version of the police, and she, with the help of Jefferson, arranges a provocation - the old man announces that he wants to change his will and give the money that followed Ruby to charity. That night, when trying to kill him, the police detain Josephine Turner.

• 1984 - “The Body in the Library” (“ Miss Marple ” series, produced by the BBC , starring Joan Hickson ).
• 2004 - “The Body in the Library” (“ Miss Marple ” series, production of ITV , starring Geraldine McEwan . In this film adaptation, while maintaining the main motive for the crime, the ending is radically changed: Josie and Adelaide become the criminals, who turn out to be lesbians in love with each other).