One morning, in the residence of Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dorothy, a corpse is discovered in the library. The lifeless body of a strangled woman lies on the carpet. Dorothy Bantry immediately notifies her astute friend Jane Marple, who will try to unravel the thread in a case much more complicated than it initially seemed.

This is the second adventure of this peculiar heroine who lives in St. Mary Mead, a fictional village in the English countryside. According to one of her favorite sayings, "human nature is the same everywhere."