Major Palgrave was telling Miss Marple about a chap who had "almost certainly committed a couple of murders and got away with it". It turned out that he "happened to have a snapshot" of the blighter in question. Unfortunately, just as his account reached the climactic point of sorting through his portable picture file, he was interrupted by the arrival of a group of fellow guests at the Caribbean Hotel where Miss Marple had gone for quiet convalescence. Miss Marple had reason to remember Major Palgrave's hurried and embarrassed changing of the subject, and his startled reaction to the presence of someone among the new arrivals. The next morning Palgrave was dead - unexpectedly but not, apparently, unnaturally. But Miss Marple's suspicions, once aroused, have never been easily allayed; and when she discovered that the photograph, so precisely described by Major Palgrave the day before, was not to be found among his effects she knew that her convalescence would not follow its planned quiet course. She wondered: who, among her fellow residents on the small island, had been featured in that old snapshot.