Mrs Holloway

In the short story The House of Lurking Death, Mrs Holloway is the cook at Thurnly Grange. She is the aunt of Rose, the kitchen maid. Mrs Holloway told Tommy and Tuppence that she was positive that Dennis Radclyffe had not yet returned to the house when the tea was cleared away. Since most of the other deaths in the house came from consuming poisoned fig paste in the sandwiches at tea, it was a puzzle how he had ingested the poison.

Portrayals
In LWT's 1983 TV adaptation of The House of Lurking Death, Mrs Holloway is portrayed by Deddie Davies. The portrayal is largely faithful to the original but here Rose the kitchen maid is not her niece but her daughter. In this adaptation, there is an additional scene where Tommy accuses both Rose and Mrs Holloway as suspects. Rose, because he thinks she is in love with Dennis Radcliffe and so killing the people was a matter of doing away with the competition, and Mrs Holloway because she probably considered Dennis Radcliffe an unsuitable philanderer and wanted to get rid of his influence on her daughter.