Vera Blake

In the novel Mrs McGinty's Dead, Vera Blake is one of three woman (and a twelve year old girl) mentioned by journalist Pamela Horsfall in an article of the newspaper Sunday Comet entitled: “Women Victims of Bygone Tragedies - Where are these women now?” The article recounts the tragic stories of the four, all of whom were involved in serious crimes in the past and speculates about what has happened to them since that time and where they are now.

According to the article, Vera was a woman with whom everything went wrong. Her first boyfriend turned out to be a gangster wanted for killing a bank watchman. She then married a respectable tradesman who mturned out to be a fence for stolen goods. Her two children turned out to be shoplifters. Finally some "good man" had offered Vera and her children a new home in the Dominions.