Mrs Perenna

In the novel N or M?, Mrs Perenna is the proprietress of Sans Souci, a hotel in Leahampton. She manages the hotel with the help of her daughter Sheila.

For Tommy and Tuppence whose mission was to uncover two German spies "M" and "N", Mrs Perenna is an early suspect not least because of her foreign sounding surname. Mrs Perenna strikes the Beresfords as a strange person, and this is reinforced by the observations of another hotel resident Mrs O'Rourke who also thinks Mrs Perenna is not who she seemed to be. According to Mrs O'Rourke, herself an Irish woman, Mrs Perenna is clearly Irish. Yet she insists that she is English and had a Spanish husband.