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 US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence. The novel features her fictional amateur detective, Miss Marple. Plot summary The maid at Gossington Hall wakes Mrs Bantry, “There is a body in the library!” she cries. 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. She had been painted with heavy makeup, platinum-blonde hair, and a silver-spangled dress. The colonel then contacts the police and Mrs Bantry calls Miss Marple, (an old friend of hers). 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 Blake's girlfriend Dinah Lee, a platinum blonde, is very much alive and arrives at the house while Melchett is interviewing Blake. Dr Haydock’s autopsy reveals that the young woman, healthy but not fully mature, died between 10 pm and 12 midnight the previous evening, had been drugged and then strangled, and was not sexually molested. Miss Marple notices that the appearance of this girl is not right, from her bitten 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. Dolly and Miss Marple move to the Majestic to investigate further. Conway calls Sir Henry Clithering to join the investigation; Sir Henry sees Miss Marple at the hotel and in turn invites her to investigate. Conway made large financial settlements for his children at the time each married. Then his wife, son and daughter were killed in an aeroplane crash eight years earlier. The three grieving survivors, son-in-law Mark, daughter-in-law Adelaide, and Conway, made up a household.