Foreword
There are certain clichés belonging to certain types of fiction. The “bold bad baronet” for melodrama¹, the “body inthe library” for the detective story. For several years I treasured up the possibility of a suitable “Variation on a well-known Theme.” I laid down for myself certain conditions. The library in question must be a highly orthodox andconventional library. The body, on the other hand, must be a wildly improbable and highly sensational² body. Suchwere the terms of the problem, but for some years they remained as such, represented only by a few lines of writing inan exercise book. Then, staying one summer for a few days at a fashionable hotel by the seaside I observed a family atone³ of the tables in the dining room; an elderly man, a cripple, in a wheeled chair, and with him was a family party ofa younger generation. Fortunately they left the next day, so that my imagination could get to work unhampered by anykind of knowledge. When people ask “Do you put real people in your books?” the answer is that, for me, it is quiteimpossible to write about anyone I know, or have ever spoken to, or indeed have even heard about! For some reason, itkills them for me stone dead. But I can take a “lay figure” and endow it with qualities and imaginings of my own.
So an elderly crippled man became the pivot⁴ of the story. Colonel and Mrs. Bantry, those old cronies of my MissMarple, had just the right kind of library. In the manner of a cookery recipe add the following ingredients: a tennis pro,a young dancer, an artist, a girl guide, a dance hostess, etc., and serve up à la Miss Marple!
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