Who, besides Mr. Nuttel, is the victim of Vera's hoax?

It might
be said that Mrs. Sappleton is also the victim of Vera's hoax, but that would depend upon what
happened after Framton Nuttel fled from the house. He might report to other people that the
woman was insane. That seems unlikely, however, because he would be required to tell about the
whole incident. If he did that he would find out that the three "ghosts" he thought he
saw were still very much alive, in which case Mrs. Sappleton was perfectly sane in expecting
them to come home and in leaving the window open. It seems unlikely that Nuttel would not relate
his experience to his sister and that she would make inquiries of the minister with whom she
stayed when she was in the area. Vera herself might become the victim of her own hoax in that
case. Everyone would realize that she had played a cruel trick on their poor, neurotic visitor
and that she had also misrepresented her aunt as a lunatic.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't
they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

     Framton shivered
slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension.
The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. 

Vera would be subject to some form of punishment--or at least a
severe scolding from more than one of the members of that family. That might not discourage her
from frightening other visitors with the same ghost story in the future, since it had been such
a big success with Framton Nuttel. The same scenario seems to be repeated practically every
night. Mrs. Sappleton leaves the big French window open for the three hunters, and they return
at about the same hour for tea. Bertie sings the same awful song with the words:

"I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

It is a little bit like the movie Groundhog
Day in which the same things keep happening every day. The entire family, including
Vera, might be somewhat victimized by the girl's hoax if word got around in this uptight
neighborhood that the entire family was conspiring to frighten visitors out of their wits with
ghost stories and bizarre behavior. It seems possible that Nuttel might have gotten the idea
that the whole family was in on the hoax and had actually rehearsed
it.

On the other hand, if the family's
reputation was not compromised, Framton Nuttel's sister, who does not appear in the story, might
be slightly victimized because she might not be welcome to return to the rectory or the
neighborhood because of her relationship with a man who was obviously a lunatic. Friends and
neighbors of the Sappletons would be more likely to sympathize with them than with a couple of
strangers who lived in London.