Roley Vavasour

In the short story The Voice in the Dark, Roley Vavasour is a cousin of the Barron family and is a regular guest at Abbot's Mede. His mother is was the first cousin of Lady Stranleigh and he is the heir to the Stranleigh title, and the estate in the event of the death of Lady Stranleigh and her daughter Margery Gale. Roley proposed to Margery some three weeks before the events in the story but she turned him down as she prefers someone else. A believer in the supernatural, he and Mrs Casson bring a medium Mrs Lloyd down to Abbot's Mede and more or less force Margarey into holding a seance to resolve the mystery of her hearing "a voice in the dark".

Towards the end of the story, Margery makes out her will but she decides not to leave anything to her cousin Roley. She says she does not trust him as he is always out to get what he can.