Lydia Belcher

We learn in the previous novel, Harry Revel, that Lydia Belcher had been left her estate by a local landowner who appears to have seduced her mother and then had the woman married off to his gamekeeper. This percentage of aristocratic blood, along with the estate, enables her to mix with the local gentry on equal terms. She adds to her status by running a smuggling syndicate from her house, attracting money for the purpose of making money. It also shows her position in regard to the working people who ran such ventures (such as the Quillers of Polperro). She also has the advantage of being physically attractive, something she inherited from her mother, and the confidence to use it to advantage. Jack Rogers, the local JP, is said to be in love with her. So was the fraudulent clergyman John Whitmore, from whose clutches she was fortunate to have escaped.

Her run-in with Whitmore does not seem to have dented her confidence. She is there to command, even on the cricket field, with male and female grist to her mill. This Captain Branscome deduces when he is proposed as leader of the expedition, making it a condition that all accept his judgements. He has to have the position restated when the island his reached. Branscome does not doubt her intelligence or her powers of decision, but, as with the Whitmore case, she is not without a certain naivety, especially where men are concerned. Beauregard has no trouble in talking himself aboard the Espriella.

Lydia Belcher is a peripheral character through most of the novel, more so than in Harry Revel where she is at the centre of smuggling operations. She comes centre-stage in the last chapter when she and Dr Beauregard are left together in the dining-room  while the rest of the party examine the treasure. Dr Beauregard makes his 'confession' to Lydia Belcher as to a priest; only he does not believe in religion but he does believe in redemption of a different kind, a 'secret' lying at the centre of a woman, with Lydia Belcher as the woman. He explains his own bastardy, imagining Lydia Belcher to be of pure heredity, oblivious to the fact that she was probably conceived out of wedlock. Lydia turns her back on him as corrupt, although she has some insight into his meaning, which the circumstances of her own birth provides. However, the reader can only grasp this if Harry Revel has previously been read. Whatever the reason, it is possible that Beauregard's attraction to Lydia Belcher saves the whole party from being poisoned.