In the short story The Incredible Theft, Mrs Vanderlyn is a beautiful blonde American woman. She has been involved in some dubious spying and espionage in which she uses her charms to seduce her victims into telling her their secrets.
Her counterpart from the short story The Submarine Plans is Mrs Conrad.
Appearance and character[]
Mrs Vanderlyn is described as a very good-looking American woman with blond hair. Her American accent is described as pleasant without becoming exagerrated. A good listener, her main method involved charming and faking interested to the jobs and activities of the men she got close to in order to obtain important information.
Background[]
According to Charles Mayfield she has been married three times, first to an Italian man, then to a German and then to a Russian, which helped her make contacts in many countries. Throughout her life Mrs Vanderlyn has been involved in espionage, which allowed her to support her lavish and luxurious lifestyle. Mrs Vanderlyn hired the maid Leonie about five months prior to her meeting with Charles Mayfield.
Plot[]
Mrs Vanderlyn was contacted by agents of some European power who were blackmailing Charles Mayfield with a letter proving his guilt in a past scandal in exchange of the plans of a new bomber he had in his pocession. She agreed to be the mediator, and was thus invited to Lord Mayfield's house along with the Carringtons.
After dinner, Mrs Vanderlyn withdrew with Mrs Macatta and Lady Julia Carrington to the drawing-room, where they were soon joined by Lord Mayfield, Sir George Carrington and Reggie Carrington for two rubbers of Bridge. Afterwards she withdrew to her room for the night, but she returned to fetch a book and almost collided with the secretary Mr Carlile. She rang up for her maid repeatedly, but Leonie would not come, forcing Mrs Vanderlyn to go out on the landing and call out for her to have her hair brushed.
The next morning she was interrogated by Hercule Poirot for the theft of the bomber plans. Mrs Vanderlyn testified with a victorious and satisfied aura, as Lord Mayfield's staged theft of the plans meant her mission would be successful. As agreed, Lord Mayfield put the plans in Mrs Vanderlyn's dressing-case that Leonie fetched. Unbeknownst to Mrs Vanderlyn, Lord Mayfield had made small but crucial modifications to the plans, rendering the final product useless. In turn Mrs Vanderlyn gave him the incriminating letter, under the pretext it was a normal letter she wanted him to send on her behalf. Then she drove off with Leonie and the false plans.
Portrayals[]
In the ITV adaptation it is revealed that she had seduced a young tank officer into revealing secrets of a secret tank which caused him to commit suicide; at the end she hands over to the Germans a copy of the stolen metal formula [which in fact had been changed to be unworkable] after she blackmailed Thomas Mayfield with a Japanese contract in which he sold howitizers to the Japanese.