Content warning Mention of dead Marley
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail
— The Christmas Books (Penguin Popular Classics) by Charles Dickens (Page 7)
The first page is almost completely filled with statements that Marley was dead, to begin with. And, yes, it is for the story indeed important that the reader knows it.