Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe

In the novel Hallowe'en Party, the late Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe was a wealthy widow who moved to Woodleigh Common in order to be nearer to her relatives. She died some two years before the events in the book.

The wife of a big shipbuilder, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe inherited great wealth from her husband. After living abroad for a while, her health failed and so she decided to move to Woodleigh Common to be with her nephew Hugo Drake and his wife Rowena. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe was a keen gardener and when she saw Quarry House in the village whose grounds included a disused quarry, she became attracted to the possibility of turning the quarry into a sunk garden.

After buying the property, she employed a landscape gardener Michael Garfield for the quarry project. She spent a large sum of money and also the two of them worked some three or four years ultimately transforming the quarry into a beautiful garden. She also paid for the building of a bungalow for Michael Garfield on the grounds, a house which he designed himself.

In her will, she left some bequests to charities and the bungalow to Michael Garfield and a small income to upkeep the garden. But what surprised was that there was a codicil where the bulk of her estate, believed to have been intended for Hugo and Rowena Drake, was now to go to Olga Seminoff, an au-pair girl who had looked after her in her declining years. The codicil was ultimately proved to be a fake and Olga disappeared.

However, towards the end of the novel, a cleaning lady Harriet Leaman came forward and revealed that there was indeed a genuine codicil. Mrs Leaman and a gardener James Jenkins had witnessed it and this did indeed leave everything to Olga. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe hid this codicil in her copy of the book Enquire Within Upon Everything and this never came to light.