Rex Fortescue, head of a family firm of financiers, dies suddenly in his city office having been poisoned. Inspector Neele's only clue is a handful of rye found in the deceased's jacket pocket. Fortescue had two sons: Percival and Lance, who was last known to be living in Africa. Rex had recently married a much younger woman, Adele. Among the staff at the family home, Yew Tree Lodge, is a young housemaid, Gladys, who was trained in the Hampshire village of St. Mary Mead by none other than Miss Jane Marple. Suspicion falls on all the members of the household when the poison is identified as yew. When Adele is found dead, the connection to the nursery rhyme is very clear to Miss Marple: "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye, four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." The king in his counting house is Rex; the Queen (Adele) died while eating bread and honey. The next victim can only be the maid, Miss Marple's friend Gladys.
