Mr Murray is a village parallel which Miss Marple recalled while on board a cruise ship during the events recounted in the authorised continuation short story The Jade Empress. Mr Murray was a schoolteacher in St. Mary Mead who who pined after his long-lost love, a girl who had moved to London years earlier, while his wife languished from lack of attention. Miss Marple compare Mr Murray to Mr Pang who had been looking forward to seeing his son Tao again and had been talking about it for years. Of such behaviour Miss Marple noted that "It’s hard to compete with a fantasy."