Elspeth McGillicuddy was in a train when she witnessed a murder occurring in a passing train. She reported it immediately to the ticket taker and then to the station master at the next stop, and even to the police. The trouble was that she was an older woman and thus not taken seriously, plus no dead body was found on any trains in the next few days.
Her friend, Jane Marple, quite an old woman herself, hatches a plan to find the body after scoping out train time tables and railway maps, long before these days of satellite imagery on Google. She hires a young woman to take a job at an estate near the likeliest place that a body would have been thrown from the train. The woman locates the body in a sarcophagus in an outbuilding on the estate, but the mystery only deepens as the body remains unidentified. An old man, Luther Crackenthorpe, owns the estate. His relationship with his three sons is antagonistic while his dutiful daughter tends to his needs. When the Scotland Yard investigation of the dead woman stalls out, deaths follow in the Crackenthorpe family. Miss Marple keeps up with the investigation from the sideline, and (of course) she knows who the murderer is long before I do.This mystery is traditional Agatha Christie, with its fast pace and suspense.
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