Savoy Hotel

The Savoy Hotel is the London setting for the apparent half of Una Drake’s double-location puzzle. The evidence initially places Una dining there with Mr. le Marchant while also placing her in Torquay on the same evening. As Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Beresford test the competing accounts, the hotel’s supper party supplies a public, corroborated-looking itinerary—and helps expose how a true-seeming record can coexist with a deliberately constructed mystery.

The Savoy in Una Drake’s account

Una’s letter describes two incompatible versions of one evening. In the London version, she dines alone at the Bon Temps Restaurant in Soho, attends the Duke’s Theatre, and has supper at the Savoy with Mr. le Marchant. In the other, she is staying at the Castle Hotel, Torquay, and does not return to London until the following morning. The Savoy is the most socially verifiable stop in the London itinerary: it links Una to a named companion and a specific meal, rather than leaving the claim as an unsupported assertion.

Tommy follows the London trail through the restaurant, theatre, and hotel details. The papers record supper at the Savoy with Mr. le Marchant, and Tommy considers interviewing him. Tuppence immediately notes the limitation: if he is helping Una, his account cannot settle which version is true. The hotel’s presence in the itinerary makes it testable, but not automatically decisive; corroboration can be part of the puzzle rather than its solution.

Witnesses and the supper party

Mr. le Marchant confirms that Una supped with him at the Savoy on Tuesday. He says she emphasized the date and made him write it in a little book; the entry reads, “Having supper with Una. Savoy. Tuesday 19th.” The written note gives the meeting the appearance of an ordinary appointment recorded at the time, while his testimony confirms that the London encounter was not merely invented after the fact.

His recollection also adds a striking complication. During supper, Una told him that although he thought she was sitting with him, she was really having supper two hundred miles away in Devonshire. He recalls the remark as strange, and reports that his friend Dicky Rice thought he had seen Una in Torquay that afternoon. The Savoy scene thus contains, within the evidence for Una’s London presence, her own hint that a second presence might be claimed elsewhere.

Tuppence checks the social setting independently by visiting Mrs. Oglander under the pretence of gathering details for a new illustrated paper. Mrs. Oglander confirms that Una sat at the next table to hers at the Savoy with Mr. le Marchant. This account extends the chain beyond the companion who may be assisting Una: another diner recalls the party and the adjoining table. The hotel consequently serves as a shared public setting in which separate witnesses can confirm parts of the same evening.

The timeline and the unresolved appearance

The Torquay evidence gives the Savoy meeting a precise contrast. Una is recorded arriving at the Castle Hotel at four o’clock, seen by Mr. Rice at five, dining at the hotel at eight, and asking for a hot-water bottle at half past nine. The chronology then places her at the Savoy with Mr. le Marchant at half past eleven. The sequence makes the contradiction concrete: the Savoy supper is set against a succession of reported appearances in Torquay, rather than against a vague claim that Una was somewhere else.

The investigators’ task is to distinguish the true account from the other one, not simply to establish that a Savoy supper occurred. Mr. le Marchant’s dated note and Mrs. Oglander’s recollection support Una’s presence in London; the hotel records and Dicky Rice’s sighting support the Torquay side. The Savoy’s evidentiary importance lies in this tension. It anchors one version firmly enough to challenge the other, while the conflicting timetable leaves open how Una could appear to be in two places on the same night.

Narrative significance

The Savoy is presented through itinerary, recollection, and verification, not through an extended description of the building. Its function is to make an extraordinary claim legible as a practical investigation: a named guest, a particular Tuesday, a written reminder, an adjoining table, and a half-past-eleven appearance can all be checked against the Torquay timeline. Yet each confirming detail sharpens rather than dissolves the problem. The hotel is both evidence of Una’s London presence and one side of a puzzle whose force depends on the competing evidence remaining credible.