This is one of a numerous number of Season 6 episodes in which Jessica Fletcher appears only as the narrator in a brief frame story. This was done to give an overworked Angela Lansbury a break.
Guest star Shirley Knight vied with Angela Lansbury for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress of 1962: Knight, nominated for Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), and Lansbury, nominated for The Manchurian Candidate (1962), were both bested by Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker (1962)). Knight would be one of two ''Murder, She Wrote'' guest stars who had afforded Lansbury competition for an Oscar, the other being Ann Blyth (Reflections of the Mind (1985)).
In the beginning of the episode, Jessica Angela Lansbury is feeding a yellow canary. A reference, no doubt, to one of her first films, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), in which she sang Good Bye Little Yellow Bird.
Shirley Knight, here playing Grace Lambert, had in Smooth Operators (1989) play a character named Grace Fenton.