The Body in the Library (1/3)

The Bantrys' library is the sort of room nothing ever happens in, which is why the discovery is such a shock. A young blonde woman, strangled, laid out among the books. Colonel Arthur and Dolly Bantry wake to the news, and Dolly sensibly phones her old friend Miss Marple before anyone else. Nobody at the Hall knows the girl. Nobody claims her. The morning starts badly and gets worse; the police are called, and the Bantrys' quiet life is suddenly everybody's business.

The dead woman is Ruby Keene, a dancer at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth, a seaside resort built for people pretending to be richer than they are. Dolly and Jane decide the place to look is the hotel itself, so they check themselves in and take up residence among the guests. Observation is the plan, and neither of them is bad at it. The clientele is a cast of characters in its own right, and one of them is wearing the wrong story. The Majestic is the sort of place where everyone is on display and nobody is being watched, which makes it a comfortable home for a murderer.

It is a story that starts in the quietest room in England and moves to the noisiest hotel on the coast, and both places turn out to have the same talent for not seeing what is in front of them. A body in the library is a cliché until somebody actually finds one. The first part does its job with care: it sets the table and introduces the guests, then leaves the body where everyone has to step around it.

Agatha Christie wrote the story and Silvio Narizzano directed; the first of three parts went out on 26 December 1984. Joan Hickson is Miss Marple, with Gwen Watford and Moray Watson as the Bantrys, Valentine Dyall as Lorrimer, Frederick Jaeger as Colonel Melchett, Anthony Smee as Basil Blake and Karin Foley as Mary.

And the Bantrys are still reeling when this part closes, with the Majestic Hotel waiting for them. Ruby Keene's life, it turns out, is where the mystery actually begins.