In the novel Mrs McGinty's Dead, Mrs Elliot is a neighbour of Abigail McGinty at Broadhinny. On the morning after Mrs McGinty's murder, Larkin, the local baker, had come to fetch Mrs Elliot when he and lodger James Bentley had failed to find Mrs McGinty and could not get a response when knocking at her bedroom door. Mrs Elliot went into Mrs McGinty's bedroom and found it unoccupied. She then went into her sitting room and found the body there.
Mrs Elliot is described at a tall gaunt dark-haired woman. To Poirot, her account of how she found the body was that of someone "recounting her one moment of glorious living."