Lord Listerdale

In the short story The Listerdale Mystery, Lord Listerdale is a wealthy but eccentric nobleman. Some time before the events in the story, he had disappeared. There were rumours that he had gone to East Africa. Subsequently, 7 Cheviot Place, the London townhouse he was staying at during the time of his disappearance, was put out for rent to "gentlepeople" at a nominal rate.

For Mrs St. Vincent who rented the house, the mystery only deepened. The servants came along with the nominal rent. Flowers and provisions turned up at the house, supposedly from Lord Listerdale's other properties, including his country seat a King's Cheviot and another estate on the Yorkshire Moors. Then when Mrs St. Vincent asked the butler Quentin about Lord Listerdale, he spoke about him in the past tense.

According to the house agents, Lord Listerdale, fifty-three years of age, was indeed in East Africa and had been there for the last eighteen months. He had a reputation for being a great traveller in the wilds and was not expected back in England for some years. He had left his affairs in the hands of his cousin Colonel Maurice Carfax. Nonetheless, these facts did not expect why the house was being rented out for a nominal sum and why the servants were being maintained at the landlord's expense and that free provisions kept arriving. Solving the Listerdale mystery become the main plot of the story.