Murder in the Gunroom

Jeff Rand

Rand runs a Tri-State Detective Agency but thinks of himself as a prosperous businessman and collector, a King Charles II in a Brooks Brothers suit who can be a serviceable friend or a very unpleasant enemy. Gladys Fleming maneuvers him into cataloguing her late husband's pistols, and his expertise soon makes him the one man who can see what the fake accident was hiding. He plays cat-and-mouse with suspects while quietly refusing to let Gladys stand guard with a target pistol, and his General Semantics habit of thinking in individuals rather than labels keeps him a step ahead of everyone else in the house.

Arnold Rivers

Rivers dealt in antique arms and moved in the same collector circles as Lane Fleming, but he was the sort who identified people by class-label and would only drink with those he considered his equals. That very snobbery becomes a clue: Rand reasons that whoever shared Rivers's last drink was no butler, which narrows the field of suspects considerably. His death, following so closely on Fleming's, is what pulls Rand into the case at all, and the swarm of reporters outside his shop signals just how public the scandal is about to become.

Lane Fleming

Fleming spent decades building one of the country's finest pistol collections, systematically replacing inferior pieces until the twenty-five hundred he left behind were a genuine asset for his widow and stepdaughters. The official story is that he died cleaning an old revolver, but the lawyer Goode is already defensive about rumors of suicide, and Rand finds the accident theory thin from the start. His death is the hinge on which everything turns: the collection must be appraised, the estate settled, and somewhere in that gunroom is the answer to whether he was careless or killed.

Gladys Fleming

Gladys is blue-eyed, golden-haired, and persuasive enough that Rand compares her favorably to Nell Gwyn, and she knows exactly how to corner a man into taking a case he'd rather decline. She hires Rand ostensibly to appraise and sell the collection, but her real interest in how her husband died stays ambiguous, and she offers to stay home from church with a target pistol when the danger turns personal. Whether she's a grieving widow, a suspect, or something more calculating is a question the early chapters deliberately leave open.

Fred Dunmore

Dunmore moves through the household with a bluff, backslapping manner, grateful to Rand for recovering the stolen pistols and quick to admit he'd objected when Gladys first brought the detective in. But his curiosity about whether Rand is investigating Lane's death, and his careful fencing when Rand turns the question back on him, suggest a man with something to protect. He's the kind of supporting figure who could be a loyal friend or a nervous accomplice, and Rand watches him closely for exactly that reason.

Stephen Gresham

Gresham's name surfaces early when Farnsworth floats a theory about him in connection with Rivers, and Rand is careful to keep that speculation quiet because it could damage the young man professionally. Gresham then hires Rand himself to investigate the Rivers murder, which gives Rand a second client and a second thread to pull alongside the Fleming appraisal. His stake in the outcome, and whatever connection he had to Rivers's shop, make him a figure whose motives Rand has to weigh without tipping his hand.