Robert Gardner

In the novel The Sittaford Mystery, Robert Gardner is the husband of Jennifer Gardner (née Trevelyan), the sister of is the sister of Captain Trevelyan. Robert and Jennifer live in "The Laurels" on Waldon Road, in Exeter. During the First World War, Robert had been a captain in the army but was invalided out, suffering from shell shock.

According to Miss Davis, the nurse employed to look after Robert, he had lost the use of his limbs entirely but there was no visible disability. Robert's wife Jennifer had wanted to send him for an expensive course of treatment and had approached her brother Captain Trevelyan for a loan but he had refused. This had been a source of tension between the brother and sister and the prospect of inheriting money from her brother made her a plausible suspect in his murder. Indeed, soon after the death of Captain Trevelyan and hearing about her inheritance, she had written to his solicitors asking for an advance so that she could send Robert for treatment.

While investigating the death of Joseph Trevelyan to clear her fiance, Emily Trefusis decided on impulse to call on Robert. She found Robert to be "a big  man,  blue  eyed  and  fair  haired." He looked "as Tristran  ought  to  look  in  the  third  act  of Tristran  and  Isolde  and  as  no  Wagnerian  tenor  has  ever  looked  yet." Emily also found him to be a cruel man. He referred to her as "the criminal's  spouse  to  be". He was, Emily observed, "A man  who  would  take  a  malicious  joy in  giving  you  sharp  digs  in  painful  places." Using the subterfuge of returning for gloves which she "left behind", she chanced upon Robert sitting up hand in hand with Nurse Davis. This suggests that Robert was not as invalid as he pretended to his wife and that there was an affair going on with his nurse.