The Riddle

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A fairly well written and tolerably dramatic play on the old theme of the adventuress whose past is exposed and who defends herself eloquently against the exposer. The scene is at a hotel in Ireland. Mrs. Lytton, a more or less mysterious lady, fascinates one or two old boys and also a young boy, Cecil Orme, engaged to Beatrice. Stronach, the typical barrister of the theatre, and Beatrice's godfather finds out that she is really Mrs Ledbetter, a woman who was tried for the murder of her husband. She was acquitted but Stronach thinks he knows of other evidence which would have convicted her. Being in a play, Stronach does not go to her with this knowledge but tells the Ledbetter case as an interesting story, to the assembled company, and Mrs Lytton breaks down when he accuses her of having tried the poison on her dog - she being devoted to her dogs. Later, in a good scene, she convinces Stronach that he was wrong about the dog and that in spite of her husband's fiendish treatment of her, she did not poison him: that was done by her maid who hated him. Then he persuades her (having incidentally discomfited a blackmailer and recovered letters for her) to go away and leave Orme to Beatrice - whom of course, he secretly and nobly loves himself as godfathers are wont to do. It is theatrical stuff, but gives an effective part for Miss Irene Vanbrugh who no doubt will make it worth seeing [...]