The body in the library

The Body in the Library is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1942 and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in May of the same year.The novel features her fictional amateur detective, Miss Marple. The maid at Gossington Hall wakes Mrs Bantry by saying, “There is a body in the library!” Dolly Bantry then wakes her husband, Colonel Arthur Bantry to go downstairs. He finds the dead body of a young woman on the hearth rug in the library, dressed up and with platinum blonde hair. The Colonel calls the police, and Mrs Bantry calls her old friend, Miss Marple. The police investigators include Colonel Melchett and Inspector Slack. Trying to identify this dead young woman, Melchett heads to the nearby cottage of Basil Blake, but Dinah Lee, a platinum blonde, arrives while Colonel Melchett is present, very much alive. Dr Haydock’s autopsy reveals that the young woman, healthy but not fully matured, died between 10 pm and 12 midnight the previous evening, had been drugged and then strangled, and was not molested. Miss Marple notices that the appearance of this girl is not right, from her fingernails to her old dress. She shares these observations with Dolly. Hotel guest Conway Jefferson reports Ruby Keene, an 18-year-old dancer at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth, as missing. Josie Turner, employee at the hotel, identifies the body as that of her cousin Ruby. Guests saw Ruby as late as 11 pm dancing with George Bartlett, but Ruby did not appear for her dance demonstration at midnight. Conway tells police he has revised his will to favour Ruby, until the legal adoption is completed.