Una Drake

Una Drake is an Australian visitor in London whose bold wager that she had been in two places at once creates a deceptively baffling case for Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Beresford. Its solution is not an ingenious disguise or an impossible journey but a twin sister, Vera, whose arrival makes the alibi possible and reveals Una’s bet as a prank on Montgomery Jones.

Identity and Introduction

Una is introduced through Montgomery Jones’s account of meeting her at dinner. He describes her as a sporting, daring woman staying in a flat in Clarges Street with another girl, and says that their encounter had made a powerful impression on him. Tuppence recognizes that the problem requires a sympathetic feminine approach rather than only Mr. Blunt’s businesslike manner, and draws out the romantic context behind Jones’s request.

The case arrives in writing. Una claims that one account places her dining alone at the Bon Temps Restaurant in Soho, going to the Duke’s Theatre, and supping with Mr. le Marchant at the Savoy; another has her staying at the Castle Hotel, Torquay, and returning to London only the following morning. She challenges Jones to determine which account is true and how she managed the other. The apparent contradiction turns a courtship wager into a puzzle for the agency.

The Investigation and the Reversal

After speaking with Mr. le Marchant, Tommy allows for the possibility that the man is either an exceptionally good liar or truthful. Tuppence revises her own view and becomes inclined to believe that Una was at the Savoy for supper that night. Their uncertainty is part of the case’s design: the competing stories sound plausible enough that the investigators cannot settle the matter by accepting one witness’s account.

Tuppence eventually announces that she has solved the alibi and identifies the decisive answer: twins. She recalls that Tommy’s talk the previous night about mothers-in-law, twins, and bottles of beer had suggested the possibility, then cables to Australia for confirmation. The reply establishes that Una has a twin sister, Vera, who arrived in England the preceding Monday. Una stayed in London; Vera went to Torquay. The two locations therefore belonged to two sisters, not to one woman making an impossible itinerary.

Relationships and Motives

Una’s wager is bound up with her meeting Montgomery Jones and the effect she had on him. Jones wants the Beresfords to establish which story is true, but the discovery recasts the challenge: the twins’ arrangement was not evidence of supernatural coincidence or a criminal scheme. Una had made the bet spontaneously because she thought it would be a joke at Jones’s expense.

Vera is essential to the explanation, although the supplied account gives her only a brief role: she is Una’s twin, arrives in England shortly before the wager is investigated, and supplies the second presence required by the two accounts. The resolution depends on that shared identity and on the sisters’ separate movements, rather than on any elaborate transformation or hidden route.

Narrative Function and Significance

The case makes a romantic boast look like a test of physical possibility, then replaces the apparent impossibility with an ordinary fact that had not yet been disclosed. The investigation’s movement from suspicion about testimony to Tuppence’s cable from Australia turns a broad, baffling claim into a precise answer: the alibi works because the person named in both accounts is one of two twins.

Una’s characterization rests chiefly on the lively impression she makes on Jones and on the audacity of her wager. The reveal gives that boldness a light, teasing consequence: what initially appears to demand serious detection proves to be a prank enabled by Vera’s presence in England. The case’s pleasure lies in the gap between the impossible claim and its simple, human explanation.