"A vintage Christie written - like 'Curtain' - some thirty years ago, and alas, her last.
Pretty Gwenda Reed, twenty-one and newly married, had come from New Zealand to search for a home in England for herself and her husband, Giles. She settled on a small South Coast town, Dillmouth, and almost immediately fell in love with a delightful house where she at once felt strangely at home. But it was something more than a comfortable feeling of familiarity. Gwenda felt she actually remembered the house.
And then, on a visit to friends in London, a theatre party and a line from Webster's 'Duchess of Malfi' brought back to her the terrifying vision of a woman's body lying in the hall. It also brought another member of the theatre party into the picture: Miss Marple. And at that point Giles Reed arrived.
'I don't know whether you realize it, Miss Marple,' said Giles, 'but what it amounts to is, that we've got a first-class murder mystery on our hands. Actually on our very doorstep - or more accurately, in our front hall."
'I had thought of that, yes,' said Miss Marple slowly.
'And Giles simply loves detective stories,' said Gwenda.
'Well, I mean, it is a detective story. Body in the hall of a beautiful strangled woman. Nothing known of her but her Christian name. Of course I know it's nearly twenty years ago. There can't be any clues after all this time, but one can at least cast about, and try to pick up some of the threads. Oh, I dare say one won't succeed in solving the riddle-'
'I think you might,' said Miss Marple. 'Even after eighteen years. Yes, I think you might.'" -- Inside cover,