A young newlywed named Gwenda Reed settles into a house she has bought on the English south coast, only to find herself unsettled by sensations of recognition she cannot explain. A doorway she expects where none exists, wallpaper she pictures before it is uncovered, and a sudden flash of a strangled woman lying at the foot of a staircase all suggest she has stood in these rooms before. When she confides her fears in London, an elderly observer of human nature, Miss Jane Marple, urges caution but encourages her not to dismiss what her mind seems determined to remember. Together with her husband, Gwenda begins to trace the history of the house and the people who lived there decades earlier, uncovering the existence of a beautiful young stepmother who vanished without explanation. As the couple reopens questions that others would prefer left buried, a long-quiet crime stirs back into life, and the past proves far more dangerous than a faded memory. Miss Marple, drawing on a lifetime of quiet attention to ordinary wickedness, recognizes that disturbing the dead can provoke the living. Set against a deceptively gentle coastal town, the story weaves a buried childhood recollection, a cast of plausible suspects, and a patient unraveling of motive into a careful study of memory, suspicion, and the cost of seeking the truth.