Hermione Leigh Gordon

Hermione Leigh Gordon, called Hermy, is the absent fiancée at the centre of a short-lived missing-person inquiry. Her sudden departure appears alarming to Gabriel Stavansson, who has returned from a polar expedition earlier than expected, but the case resolves into a private embarrassment: Hermy is away for a weight-loss treatment, anxious about how she will look to him.

Identity and Background

Before her marriage, Hermione was the Honorable Hermione Crane, the second daughter of Lord Lanchester. Her first husband was killed in the War; she later became Mrs. Maurice Leigh Gordon. Before setting out on his latest expedition, Stavansson became engaged to her. He had been away for two years, making his return a consequential change in the couple’s circumstances.

Disappearance and the False Lead

Stavansson landed in England three days before he sought help, brought home on a yacht by a friend cruising in northern waters. Without that chance passage, he said, he would have remained away for another fortnight. He hurried to London after learning that people at three houses had not seen Hermy; only one household had expected her, and she had cancelled that visit at the last moment by telegram.

Lady Susan Clonray, whom Stavansson consulted, said she did not know where Hermy was and discouraged going to the police. She described Hermy not as a foolish young girl but as an independent woman accustomed to making her own plans, and suggested that she might simply be carrying out an idea of her own. Stavansson considered it possible that Hermy did not want to account to Lady Susan for all her movements, but his persistent sense that something was wrong kept the disappearance troubling him.

The apparent reassurance arrived in a telegram delivered to Lady Susan as Stavansson was leaving. It said Hermy had changed her plans and was going to Monte Carlo for a week. The message seemed to account for her absence, but it did not answer Stavansson’s underlying suspicion, and he brought the telegram to Tommy Beresford for scrutiny.

The Private Explanation

Tuppence Beresford reads the clues not as evidence of abduction but as signs of a concealed cosmetic treatment. She concludes that Hermy had gained weight during Stavansson’s two-year absence, knew that he disliked fat women, and panicked when she learned he was returning ahead of schedule. In Tuppence’s reconstruction, Hermy rushed off to receive injections from Dr. Horriston, whose treatment was secretive and expensive; Lady Susan had been sworn to secrecy and helped sustain the appearance that Hermy was merely away.

The explanation reverses the inquiry’s initial mood. Stavansson’s alarm had made Hermy’s absence look ominous, while the telegram and Lady Susan’s account offered only a plausible cover. Tuppence’s interpretation makes the central cause neither danger nor a romantic rupture, but Hermy’s wish to complete treatment before facing her returning fiancé. Tommy consequently dismisses the matter as having no distinctive features and asks that it not be entered in his records, turning a supposed disappearance into an anticlimactic, intimate comedy.