Marguerite Laidlaw

Marguerite Laidlaw, the charming daughter of Major Laidlaw, helps move counterfeit notes through horse-racing and gambling circles. Her flirtatious performance draws Tommy Beresford into her orbit; the notes she gives him turn that apparent intimacy into evidence of a criminal operation.

Identity and Introduction

Marguerite is presented in sharp contrast to her father, Major Laidlaw, whose upright appearance and watchful manner conceal a more sinister quality. She is described as slender and graceful, with a face likened to a Greuze painting and broken English that makes her speech part of her appeal. Tommy finds it unsurprising that men become devoted to her. From their first meeting, she takes a marked interest in him, and he plays along, allowing himself to be drawn into her company.

Her attraction is expressed as an affectionate, theatrical routine. Calling him “My Tommee,” she insists she cannot leave without him and compliments his hair as sunset-coloured. The performance makes Tommy a conspicuous favourite, while giving her a socially plausible means of keeping him close.

Role in the Counterfeit-Note Operation

Marguerite’s connection with the forged notes emerges through Jimmy Faulkener, a boy she asks to put notes on a horse for her. When Tommy wants smaller denominations, he exchanges a ten-pound note with Jimmy and receives notes that appear new and crisp. Tommy’s observation that they have passed through few hands makes their freshness itself a clue to their recent circulation.

The connection becomes more direct at a select gambling venue Inspector Marriot has mentioned. Behind imposing folding doors, two rooms with green baize-covered tables host games in which vast sums change hands. When Marguerite rises to leave, she presses a quantity of small notes into Tommy’s hands and asks him to exchange them for a larger note. Her small bag, she says, is bulging. Tommy supplies the hundred-pound note she requests, then quietly inspects the bundle: at least a quarter of the notes are counterfeit.

The episode converts her flirtatious closeness into a practical channel for passing forged currency. Her request is not merely an excuse for an exchange; it places a substantial batch of suspicious notes in Tommy’s possession and gives him a direct view of their quality and proportion.

Relationships and Deception

Marguerite’s relationship with Tommy is shaped by his assumed role in the investigation. He permits her to treat him as a favourite, but his apparent susceptibility is tactical: he is watching the people and money around her. That double perspective gives their scenes their tension. What looks like flirtation also enables proximity to the notes and to the circles in which they are exchanged.

Her father’s presence adds a family dimension to the danger. Major Laidlaw’s polished, sportsmanlike exterior is undercut by his hard eyes and quick sideways glances; Marguerite, in turn, makes the operation socially attractive and financially mobile. The evidence establishes her active part in passing notes, while leaving the full extent of her knowledge and authority within the gang unstated.

Narrative Function

Marguerite’s beauty and playful manner initially encourage Tommy to follow her lead, but the narrative steadily redirects attention from her appearance to the objects she handles. Jimmy’s crisp notes and the larger bundle she transfers at the gambling rooms make the apparent romance legible as investigative evidence. Her charm is therefore both a character trait and cover for movement through the counterfeiters’ social world.

The contrast between surface and proof is central to her role: Tommy can accept the intimacy she stages without accepting its apparent meaning. By turning a request to exchange money into a discovery that at least one quarter of the notes are false, Marguerite becomes the point at which the investigation’s social performance yields concrete evidence.