# At the Villa Rose — Character guide

> Key figures in At the Villa Rose by A. E. W. Mason.

- [Celia Harland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/celia_harland.md): Celia Harland rose from dancing for supper in rags at the Abbaye Restaurant to becoming Mme. Dauvray's pampered companion, dressed in silk and lace. Her elegance at a séance, her private words to the chauffeur, and her d
- [M. Hanaud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/hanaud.md): Hanaud arrives at the Villa Rose as the great detective from Paris, soothing a frightened maid while quietly cataloguing every grease-mark and tumbled towel. He treats the case as a puzzle of human motive rather than mer
- [Harry Wethermill](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/harry_wethermill.md): Wethermill moves through the Villa des Fleurs with easy chatter and a lover's tenderness for Celia, yet his calm the night before the murder unsettles Ricardo. He presses Hanaud with the urgency of a man defending someon
- [Hélène Vauquier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/helene_vauquier.md): For years Hélène Vauquier was more friend than servant to Mme. Dauvray, consulted on everything and taken everywhere, until a ragged dancer from Montmartre displaced her in a single week. Her testimony about the séance a
- [Mr. Ricardo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/mr_ricardo.md): Ricardo follows Hanaud through the Villa Rose with the delighted horror of a man who reads too many detective stories, seizing on tambourines and torn scraps of paper as clues. His orderly mind recoils from the eerie eve
- [Mme. Dauvray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/mme_dauvray.md): Mme. Dauvray was a woman of common tastes and open purse, always being deceived and never learning prudence, who brought Celia Harland home from the Abbaye Restaurant and dressed her in silks within a week. She doted on 
- [Marthe Gobin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/marthe_gobin.md): A Geneva housewife who nurses her ailing husband and watches her neighbors, only to write Hanaud a rambling letter that cracks the case wide open.
- [Adèle Rossignol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/adele_rossignol.md): A bold, red-haired widow of coarse beauty who walks ahead of her companions to the Villa Rose, where the séance she attends turns into something far darker.
- [Perrichet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/perrichet.md): A self-deprecating village policeman whose careful night patrol around the Villa Rose catches the opened gate, the shifted light, and the unlatched shutter that betray a crime.
- [Henri Servettaz](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/henri_servettaz.md): A chauffeur who drives Mme. Dauvray's motorcar.
- [M. Lemerre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/lemerre.md): A magistrate involved in the legal proceedings of the case.
- [Louis Besnard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/louis_besnard.md): A friend of Harry Wethermill, questioned about the murder.
- [Hippolyte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/hippolyte.md): A servant at the Villa Rose, provides minor testimony.
- [Jeanne Rossignol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/jeanne_rossignol.md): An elderly relative of Adèle Rossignol, present at the séance.
- [Durette](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/durette.md): A police officer who assists in the Geneva investigation.
- [Captain Harland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters/captain_harland.md): Celia Harland's father, mentioned but not appearing in person.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/at_the_villa_rose_se/characters