Lady Laura Barton

In the Tommy and Tuppence short story The Affair of the Pink Pearl, Lady Laura Barton is the daughter of the late Earl of Carroway. Laura is a friend of of Colonel and Mrs Kingston Bruce and stayed with them along with the American couple Mr and Mrs Hamilton Betts. The Betts had expressed an interest in meeting someone with a title and as Lady Barton was already staying with the Kingston-Bruces, he invited the Betts to join the house party.

During the visit Mrs Hamilton Betts' precious pink pearl is stolen. Some suspicion is cast on Lady Barton because there is talk that she is a kleptomaniac. She had no money and spent her time staying with other people for whom a title still meant something. As Colonel Kingston-Bruce told Tommy and Tuppence, five distinct thefts had taken place in the households she had stayed in. Sometimes these were trivial items and at other times there were valuable items such as jewelry.

Portrayals
In LWT's 1983 TV adaptation of The Affair of the Pink Pearl, Lady Barton is portrayed by the stage actress Dulcie Gray who gets top billing as a guest star alongside the series regulars James Warwick and Francesca Annis. Unlike the original story where Lady Barton has very few lines, here the character gets a lot more screen time. There is an entire scene where Tuppence is alone talking with Lady Barton. Lady Barton admits that she knows about her kleptomania. She tells Tuppence that she cannot remember taking the pink pearl but she might well have done it. Tuppence tries to console her that there was nothing which specifically implicated her in this case. They had already searched her room and found nothing. Nonetheless Lady Barton makes Tuppence promise that if they conclude that she must have taken the pearl, that Tuppence would tell her herself and then she would know "what to do". At the conclusion of the case, Lady Barton thanks the Beresfords because she could from thence forth hold her head up high.