In the short story Greenshaw's Folly, Horace Bindler is a literary critic and a friend of Raymond West. He and Raymond were asked to witness the will of Katherine Greenshaw.
Portrayals[]
In the 2013 ITV adaptation of Greenshaw's Folly, Horace Bindler is portrayed by Rufus Jones. Here he has a totally different backstory and role in the plot. When he is first seen early in the episode, he is an architecture historian who is researching Greenshaw's Folly although he behaves suspiciously and is sometimes seen snooping around. He is particularly interested in gaining access to the laboratory of Decimus Greenshaw in the house which has been kept locked up.
Halfway through the episode, Bindler disappears. When Miss Marple examines his room, which he had left in disarray, Mrs Cresswell, the housekeeper, tells her that Bindler had refused to let her light a fire the night before. Understanding what this might mean, Miss Marple searches the fireplace and finds a tin box in which Bindler had hidden a key and a notebook. Some time later, Bindler's dead body is discovered, concealed in a lift shaft.
Enquiries by Miss Marple later reveal Bindler was not his real name at all, and he is not an architect historian. Miss Marple's suspicions about the later had been raised when he seemed to think there were "crockets" on the east tower of the house. Bindler's real name is Horace Lethbridge and he is actually a reporter with the Clarion newspaper. He had been secretly researching for a scoop on the evil medical experiments conducted by Decimus Greenshaw involving orphans from St Faith's Orphanage. However in the process of rummaging through the laboratory, Lethbridge had discovered a secret relating to Alfred Pollock and Miss Greenshaw. He had tried to blackmail Nat Fletcher with this but the latter had killed him to silence him.