Who Robert Waysmith is
Robert Waysmith works for his father Elmer in the antiquities business and is Lady Margaret Chalfont’s stepson. He belongs to Pünd’s Last Case, the continuation novel Eliot Crace is writing. His dissatisfaction with his father sits within a household already divided over money, marriage and inheritance.
Role in Marble Hall Murders
Robert supplies information about Elmer’s movements that appears to affect the poison investigation. His position is useful to the detective because he knows the business and the family, but it also gives him influence over how both are described. The case asks Pünd to notice when an apparently helpful account has made a particular conclusion easier to reach.
Key relationships
Elmer Waysmith is his father and employer; Lady Margaret Chalfont his stepmother. Atticus Pünd and Achilles Vassilikos investigate the villa’s deaths. His contemporary mirror is Roland Crace, Eliot’s brother.
Played by Harry Lloyd
Harry Lloyd plays Robert Waysmith. Lloyd’s two roles are deliberately close enough to encourage comparison. Their different places in the final explanations make that comparison one of the trilogy’s clearest warnings against reading fictional resemblance as proof.
Their story and fate — spoilers
Robert is responsible for Margaret’s murder and kills Sofia. He arranges evidence to point towards Elmer, using a disguise that includes white shoe polish and exploiting the timetable around a boat journey. Blakeney’s completed ending gives Pünd the explanation. The name Robert Waysmith also encodes Eliot’s accusation that his brother was responsible for Miriam’s death, an accusation that proves mistaken outside the manuscript.
Books and television — book spoilers
Harry Lloyd plays both Robert and Roland, making the intended parallel unusually persuasive. The book’s French setting becomes Corfu on television, but the essential interpretive problem survives: identifying the murderer in Eliot’s fiction reveals what Eliot believed, not necessarily what happened. The screen’s shared face is a clue to authorship and an invitation to doubt the author at the same time.
Read or listen to the book
Marble Hall Murders (2025)
Anthony Horowitz’s novel behind the third television mystery.
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Harry Lloyd plays both Robert Waysmith and Roland Crace, connecting the two story worlds.