The Body in the Library
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The Body in the Library is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie featuring her fictional amateur detective Miss Marple. It was first published in 1942.
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[edit] Plot
On a quiet morning in the fictional English village of St. Mary Mead, retired Colonel Bantry and his wife awaken to find the body of young woman in their library. It is no-one they know, leaving Colonel Bantry stunned and his wife rather excited by the mystery. The police are called and a complex investigation ensues, spanning the two fictional counties of Radfordshire (where St. Mary Mead is located) and neighbouring Glenshire.
The victim is dressed flamboyantly in a tawdry satin evening dress, with hair dyed platinum blonde and heavy make-up. Medical tests show the cause of death to be strangulation, preceded by a heavy sedative. Despite the worldly appearance of the victim, examination reveals that she died virgo intacta. Nevertheless, Mrs Bantry realises that as long as the murder remains unsolved her husband will be a target for suspicion and gossip, so she calls in Miss Marple, the village's amateur sleuth, to investigate. It soon turns out that Mrs Bantry's fears were justified, as the populace of the small village excitedly inflate details of the crime – very soon the body is "naked" rather than fully clothed – and unhesitatingly point the finger of blame at Colonel Bantry.
The Chief Constable of police, a retired Colonel himself (Colonel Melchett), is more inclined to suspect Bantry's Bohemian young neighbour, Basil Blake. The latter is a minor technician in the film industry who lives the ostentatious, party-going lifestyle of a Hollywood star. Blake, however, is given an alibi for the time of death (between 10 pm and midnight) by his girlfriend Dinah Lee.
After numerous enquiries about missing persons, the victim is identified as eighteen-year old Ruby Keene, a professional Ballroom dancer working at the Majestic Hotel in the seaside resort of Danemouth, 18 miles away in Glenshire. The body is identified by Ruby's colleague Josie Turner, who rather than being shocked or upset seems unaccountably angry at the dead girl.
The focus of the investigation then shifts from St. Mary Mead to Danemouth, and the Majestic Hotel in particular. Besides Josie, the other staff member of interest is Ruby's professional dance partner, Raymond Starr, who also works as the hotel's tennis coach. It was when Ruby failed to turn up for an exhibition dance with Starr scheduled for midnight that her disappearance was discovered. The last person to have seen Ruby alive was one of the guests, a rather dim-witted young man named George Bartlett. Bartlett has no obvious motive for murder, and in fact appears to be the victim of a crime himself – his car has been stolen from the hotel courtyard.
There is a rather strange group of guests at the hotel whose lives seem to have become entwined with that of the late Ruby Keene. The centre of this group is a rich, elderly, wheelchair-bound man named Conway Jefferson, who lost his legs in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of his wife, son and daughter. He now lives with Mark Gaskell, his daughter's widower, Adelaide Jefferson, his son's widow, and Peter Jefferson, Adelaide's nine-year old son from an earlier marriage. All four members of the Jefferson family are staying at the hotel together.
It turns out that Conway Jefferson had become smitten by the naïve young Ruby, in what Christie describes as Cophetua syndrome. Jefferson, who has a weak heart and is not expected to live much longer, had decided to adopt Ruby as his daughter and to amend his will such that she would receive the bulk of his estate. Jefferson had provided his son and daughter with large sums before their deaths, and he believes that Mark and Adelaide are rich enough to require no further bequest from him. In fact this is untrue, since the bulk of their fortunes have been squandered and they are far more dependent on Jefferson than he realises.
The situation becomes more complicated when the burnt-out wreck of George Bartlett's car is found, with a second murder victim inside it. This body is charred beyond recognition, but on the basis of fragments of clothing it is identified as Pamela Reeves, a sixteen year old Girl Guide who had been reported missing earlier. It soon emerges that Pamela had arranged to attend a secret "screen test" with a man whom she believed to be a Hollywood film producer, but who appears to fit the description of Basil Blake. Pamela never returned from this covert rendezvous.
By this point of the novel all the essential elements are in place. There are two bodies, one of which is so badly burnt that the possibility of a body-swap cannot be discounted. There are numerous suspects (Colonel Bantry, Basil Blake, Josie Turner, Raymond Starr, George Bartlett, Mark Gaskell and Adelaide Jefferson), several of whom are so strongly implicated that they must either have been involved in one or both of the murders, or have been deliberately framed by the true killer.
[edit] Style of the novel
In her Author's Foreword, Agatha Christie describes "the body in the library" as a cliché of detective fiction. She states that when writing her own variation on this theme, she decided that the library should be a completely conventional one while the body would be a highly improbable and sensational one. In light of these remarks, and the evidence of the novel as it is written, it can be considered a conscious parody of the genre. For the most part the novel is distinctly light-hearted in style, and even broadly comic in places, particularly in its portrayal of the idiosyncrasies of the British upper and lower classes.
An unusual feature of The Body in the Library is that it has almost as many detectives as it has suspects. Although Jane Marple is the most famous character in the novel, and the person who ultimately solves the mystery, she does not fully enter the action until the half-way point of the novel. Even then she is not always the driving force of the investigation. The police are represented by Colonel Melchett and Inspector Slack of the Radfordshire force, and Superintendent Harper of Glenshire. In addition, a second "amateur detective" who gets involved, at the request of Conway Jefferson, is Sir Henry Clithering, the retired head of Scotland Yard. Melchett, Harper and Sir Henry all play significant roles in progressing the investigation, and, through them, the reader often has access to significant information before Miss Marple does.
[edit] Self-references
At one point in the novel, the author gives herself a namecheck from the mouth of the young boy, Peter Jefferson. Explaining that he enjoys reading detective stories, Peter says that he has the autographs of Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr and H. C. Bailey. Later, when the character Mark Gaskell is introduced to Miss Marple, he asks her if she writes detective stories (on the basis that the most unlikely people write such stories, and Miss Marple looks as unlikely as anyone). Miss Marple replies that she's not that clever.
[edit] Film versions
Adaptations were made for television in 1985 and in 2004. The 2004 version took various liberties with the plot of the novel, including changing the identity of the murderer and introducing a lesbian affair.
