Mrs Amelia Rymer

In the short story The Case of the Rich Woman, Mrs Amelia Rymer is a the rich woman in question. She had come from humble beginnings, having worked at a farm house and married a workman at a mill by the name of Abner Rymer. After a hard struggle which included two episodes of unemployment, the couple had made good and had become extremely wealthy after Abner made some engineering invention. They had four children but all had died young. Then Abner, who had a weak chest, also died. By this time Amelia Rymer had a lot of money and almost everything there was to have including a yacht and a country house but she was extremely bored and unhappy and so decided to call on Parker Pyne for help. "Tell me how to spend my money!" was her challenge to him. She did not want to just give it away. In her words, she wanted to "spend it and get some good out of it."

Amelia was described as a tall woman, big-boned and ungainly and spoke with a rough accent. "The knuckles of her large hands were pronounced."