Miss Marple is visiting an old school friend, Lady Camilla Tressilian, along with an eclectic group: tennis star Nevile Strange and his wife Kay, his former wife Audrey and her childhood friend and cousin Thomas Royde, Ted Latimer, who is something of a gigolo and very attracted to Kay Strange, and finally Freddie Treves, a retired solicitor. When Treves is found dead the day after a dinner party at Lady Tressilian's home and Lady Tressilian herself is found bludgeoned to death a short time later, Miss Marple must sort through the complex set of relationships among all of the players and must determine what role a tale of a child's crime may have had to play in the deaths.