# Clouds of Witness — Character guide

> Key figures in Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers.

- [Lord Peter Wimsey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/lord_peter_wimsey.md): Peter Death Bredon Wimsey has just returned from a Corsican holiday, all scented baths and vendettas, when the call of the blood summons him home to a family catastrophe: his brother stands accused of murdering his siste
- [Lady Mary Wimsey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/lady_mary_wimsey.md): Lady Mary arrives at Lord Peter's flat in a state of desperate agitation, her complexion strained and her eyes hollowed by recent illness, begging to see her brother before he does something dreadful. She is a young woma
- [Mr. Parker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/charles_parker.md): Parker is the professional who does the unglamorous work — the cross-examinations, the interviews, the careful note-taking — while his aristocratic friend supplies the flashes of intuition. He is competent but not flashy
- [Captain Denis Cathcart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/captain_denis_cathcart.md): Cathcart was a man of good family and no money, reduced by degrees to the final deep of dishonor — keeping a mistress in Paris while courting a duke's daughter for her fortune. He understood the transaction perfectly: he
- [Bunter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/bunter.md): Bunter is the quiet engine of the Wimsey household — laying out bath-salts and flesh-brushes in Paris, producing a phial of ammonia for a hysterical Lady Mary, and later appearing with arms full of scarlet and ermine at 
- [Sir Impey Biggs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/sir_impey_biggs.md): Sir Impey arrives still in wig and gown, apologizing for the tedium of the day's proceedings, and immediately establishes himself as the kind of counsel who is not to be taken liberties with. He is the Wimseys' hired cha
- [Gerald Wimsey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/gerald_wimsey.md): Gerald Wimsey is Lord Peter's elder brother, a proud, punctilious aristocrat who treats his own murder trial as an affront to family dignity rather than a fight for his life. He clings to the principle that he need not p
- [Duke of Denver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/duke_of_denver.md): As the accused, the Duke of Denver sits alone within the Bar, the only bare head among a scarlet assembly, listening to the Attorney-General rehearse the quarrel, the shot at three, and the vanished letter. His unease at
- [Mrs. Grimethorpe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/mrs_grimethorpe.md): Mrs. Grimethorpe inhabits a bleak, hard-drinking farm on the moors, married to a brutish man whose bellowing fills the house and whose suspicions curdle the air. She offers the exhausted Wimsey and Bunter grudging warmth
- [Mr. Goyles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/mr_goyles.md): George Goyles, whom the Dowager cannot help reading as 'Gargoyles,' is Lady Mary's radical friend and the man she has been secretly meeting. When Peter approaches him at a Soviet Club, Goyles fires and flees, leaving Mar
- [Mr. Murbles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/mr_murbles.md): Old Mr. Murbles is the family's legal anchor, a cautious, well-connected solicitor who has secured Sir Impey Biggs for the defense and who despairs of the Duke's refusal to disclose his alibi. He moves between the Wimsey
- [Sir Wigmore Wrinching](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/sir_wigmore_wrinching.md): Sir Wigmore Wrinching opens the case for the Crown with the familiar tale of the quarrel, the shot, and the missing letter, hinting darkly at motives the prisoner will not explain. He treats Lady Mary as a hostile witnes
- [Mr. Grimethorpe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/mr_grimethorpe.md): Grimethorpe rules his remote moorland farm with grudging force, grudgingly yielding his fireside to two frozen strangers only when warned they might die on him. His harsh voice and the eerie singing of his household foll
- [Ellen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/ellen.md): Maid at Riddlesdale Lodge.
- [Mademoiselle Simone Vonderaa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/simone_vonderaa.md): Simone Vonderaa enters Cathcart's Paris years as the exquisite continental mistress for whom he keeps a discreet banking account and a devotion he never questions aloud. She lies to him from their earliest acquaintance, 
- [Freddy Arbuthnot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/freddy_arbuthnot.md): Freddy Arbuthnot moves easily through the drawing rooms and clubs where Wimsey needs ears and introductions, his cheerfulness a useful counterweight to the grim business of a murder inquiry. He is the sort of friend who 
- [Dowager Duchess of Denver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/dowager_duchess_of_denver.md): The Dowager Duchess of Denver endures the solemnity of her son's trial with the same running commentary she might give a church service, finding it all quite picturesque and quite High Church. Beside her sits the daughte
- [Viscount St. George](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/viscount_st_george.md): Title for the heir to the Duke of Denver.
- [Madame Leblanc](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/clouds_of_witness_se/characters/madame_leblanc.md): Proprietress of a Parisian boarding house.

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