The screenplay was not based on any published Dame Agatha Christie story. It did, however, borrow a few obscure plot details from "They Do It With Mirrors", and there is a delightful moment when Miss Jane Marple pays homage to Christie's long-running play, "The Mousetrap".
Miss Jane Marple's (Dame Margaret Rutherford's) impressive library is composed mainly of Pan and Penguin crime paperbacks (including duplicate editions of "Follow the Saint" by Leslie Charteris and Georgette Heyer's "The Foundling"; Edgar Wallace is another of her favourite authors with copies of his novels "The Flying Squad", "The Yellow Snake" and "Again Sanders") alongside crossword, quiz and limerick books, Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones", Noël Coward's "Pomp and Circumstance", Ian Fleming's "Dr. No", Ngaio Marsh's "Opening Night" and "Return to Peyton Place" by Grace Metalious. There are also copies of Dame Agatha Christie's "Three Act Tragedy", "Appointment With Death", and, intriguingly, the Miss Marple short story anthology "The Thirteen Problems".
The novel central to the plot, J. Plantagenet Corby's "The Doom Box", was devised by the scriptwriters and never really existed. The prop makers made up copies in hardback (for H.M.S. Battledore) and paperback (for Miss Jane Marple). The publishing imprint for the latter is shown to be the tongue-in-cheek Pigeon Books.
A fifth Miss Jane Marple movie, based on Dame Agatha Christie's 1942 novel "The Body in the Library", was discussed, but never made.
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