# Perishable Goods — Character guide

> Key figures in Perishable Goods by Dornford Yates.

- [Jonathan Mansel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/jonathan_mansel.md): Mansel is the still centre of a circle of friends who follow him without quite knowing his plans, and the man Rose Noble would most like to see broken. He drives like the wind through the night, reads a spy's mistake in 
- [Rose Noble](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/rose_noble.md): Rose Noble is the adversary Mansel's party dare not underestimate, a figure whose cruelty is calculated for the audience it can reach. She will not cry out when struck, which tells you everything about how she means to w
- [Adèle Pleydell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/adele_pleydell.md): Adèle moves easily among the Pleydells' guests, but her real pleasure is in the story behind the story, and she will lean down and catch a rein to get it. She reads Mansel's reticence as a romance rather than a danger, a
- [George Hanbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/george_hanbury.md): Hanbury works the unglamorous end of the operation — trailing a pasty-faced man called Casemate, watching a tobacconist's door, tearing off his collar to change his silhouette. He is loyal to Mansel and useful precisely 
- [Hannibal Rouse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/hannibal_rouse.md): Rouse installs himself among Mansel's party as a clergyman, preaching to a flock that finds him tiresome and taking in everyone but his host. Mansel never believed him, and the small tell — two hands going up to a collar
- [Carson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/carson.md): Carson brings Mansel the note found on the steps, drives beside him through the night, and delivers the coded line about a broken spring that lets the party talk without being overheard. He is not a principal in the intr
- [Casemate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/casemate.md): Casemate exists at the edge of the story as a broken body in a Salzburg sickroom, the casualty of a country that has already proven hostile to the Pleydell circle. The thirty novels sent to ease his convalescence measure
- [Bill](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/bill.md): Bill belongs to the small, indispensable retinue — alongside Carson and Rowley — that Mansel and Hanbury bring to the Continent, men who have made the journey before and can be relied on to keep their heads. His competen
- [Punter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/punter.md): Punter drifts through the early chapters as a possible face in a crowd, the kind of passing stranger Mansel insists must be remembered because one of them was certainly a spy. The nickname's dazed quality suggests someon
- [Bunch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/bunch.md): Bunch moves through the anxious household at Poganec as one of the familiar intimates drawn into the crisis, part of the small society that closes ranks when Adèle vanishes. The disappearance strips away ordinary social 
- [Tester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/tester.md): A character mentioned with some frequency, possibly a role.
- [Jute](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/jute.md): A character with a modest number of mentions.
- [Jonah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/jonah.md): A character with a recurring presence.
- [Major Pleydell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/major_pleydell.md): With Captain Pleydell incapacitated and Adèle vanished, Major Pleydell steps into the vacuum and runs the search like a military operation — no discussion with outsiders, no trust in strangers, rooms secured at Villach a
- [Richard William Chandos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/perishable_goods_se/characters/richard_william_chandos.md): A character with a formal name, possibly a relative of Mr. Chandos.

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