Martin Wylde

In the Harley Quin short story The Sign in the Sky, Martin Wylde is a gentleman farmer who works a farm in the village of Deering Vale. For a while he had pursued a love affair with Lady Vivien Barnaby who saw him as a way to escape from her much older husband Sir George Barnaby. However Martin subsequently cooled off and began to distance himself from her and began a relationship with Sylvia Dale, the daughter of a local doctor. When Lady Vivien was subsequently found murdered, Martin was arrested and put on trial for the crime.

The evidence against Martin was strong. He had kept Lady Vivien's letters to him, including one in which she begged him to come over on the day of the murder in an attempt to salvage the relationship. Martin at first denied having gone to see her but police evidence showed that he had lied: his fingerprints were found on a glass at the scene of crime. He then switched his story to one where he had come to see her. The meeting was stormy but she had cooled down at the end, and he left before the time that the servants heard a shot. However he could not explain why he had taken 45 minutes to get home when he lived nearby. Lady Vivien had been shot with Martin's gun. His only explanation was that he had been hunting game but had forgotten to bring it with him when he left Lady Vivien. Martin's defence did not convince the jury which took only 30 minutes to return a guilty verdict.

The story opens with Martin's conviction and concerns what Mr Satterthwaite does about it, encouraged by Harley Quin,