 When a despised magistrate is found shot to death in the library of the local vicarage, his wife and her lover, a portrait painter living on the church grounds, both confess to the crime. Miss Marple s keen powers of observation clear both of them of the crime, but other suspects abound. Included are the murdered man s daughter, who posed for the artist, a neurotic cleric who s embezzled church funds, the local doctor, an ex-convict who poached on the magistrate s land, and a missionary s enigmatic widow who argued with him the day before he was killed. An exasperated Inspector Slack must reluctantly accept help from the analytical Miss Marple.