On talking to the servant, Miss Marple learns that the girl engaged to Michael Rafiel had been adopted by Clotilde after the death of her parents. She then meets Lavinia's sisters, Clotilde and Anthea Bradbury-Scott and immediately feels there is something odd about Anthea. Miss Marple accepts Lavinia's invitation, assuming it to be the next part of Mr Rafiel's instructions.

Glynne and her two sisters before his death, suggesting that Miss Marple spend the most physically challenging few days of the tour with them. Her next clue comes in the form of a woman named Lavinia Glynne Rafiel had written to Mrs. Another member of the tour group, Miss Cooke, is a woman she had previously met and discussed gardening with. She learns that one of her companions, Elizabeth Temple, is the retired headmistress of the school which a girl who was engaged to Rafiel's ne'er-do-well son, Michael, attended. She is accompanied on the trip by fourteen other people, at least one of whom she suspects to be related to her enquiries. Miss Marple's first clue is a tour of famous houses and gardens of Great Britain, arranged for her by Mr. Rafiel, however, has left her few clues, not even when or where the crime was committed and who was involved. Miss Marple receives a letter from the recently deceased Mr Jason Rafiel, a millionaire whom she had met during a holiday on which she had encountered a murder, which asks her to look into an unspecified crime if she succeeds in solving the crime, she will inherit £20,000.

Marple sleeping