Character guide

J. G. Reeder

major

Also known as Mr. Reeder, Reeder

Reeder is the quiet official the underworld both fears and underestimates, summoned to Larmes Keep where nothing is quite what it seems. When a shrieking man is found stabbed behind a bolted door, Reeder's composure never cracks; he pries the paneling apart, counts the dead man's banknotes, and reads the room like a page. His patient, almost fussy thoroughness is the only thing standing between the house's secrets and the people inside it.

Margaret Belman

major

Also known as Miss Belman, Margaret

Margaret rides the branch line to Siltbury to interview for a six-hundred-a-year job she knows she is unsuited for, half out of pride and half out of pique at Reeder's cheerful indifference to her leaving. A persistent Italian stranger has been following her, and the cabman who drives her to Larmes Keep has already guessed she is not a guest. Her ordinary girlish worries about love and employment are the human thread that pulls the reader into the house's gathering dread.

Mr. Daver

supporting

Also known as Daver

Daver runs the house and its staff with the fussy authority of a man who knows he is watched, and he answers to someone above him whose name he will not say. When a murderous blade is pulled from the wall, his voice fails him and his face goes slack with a fear that looks less like shock than recognition. He is the first person Reeder studies, and the first whose composure proves to be a costume.

Mr. Ravini

supporting

Also known as Giorgio Ravini, George Ravini

Ravini belongs to the shadowy world that converges on the house, and his reappearance there detonates old loyalties Olga has kept buried since childhood. He meant everything to her once; to him she had passed entirely from memory until she revealed herself in the garden. His fate is bound up with the house's violence, and the letters he left behind are the kind Reeder finds interesting.

Olga Crewe

supporting

Also known as Miss Crewe, Crewe

Olga listens patiently while old John Flack spins his golden visions of her marriage and her white-marble house, answering yes, Father, in a voice that has gone flat. She is the object of a madman's fierce, transfiguring tenderness and the pivot of a scheme that has already cost lives. When she speaks of Ravini, her color comes and goes, and Reeder's gentle questions find more truth in her than she means to give.

Detective Brill

supporting

Also known as Brill

Brill is the practical half of the partnership in the caves, crawling through the dark to find a ship's store of food, a battery lantern, and a case opener he wields as a weapon. He admires the madman's brain even as he curses him, and he would trade ten years' pay for a gun. His steady competence is what keeps Margaret from panic while the tide rises and the tunnels refuse to lead anywhere.

John Flack

supporting

Also known as Old John, Crazy John Flack

Flack exists in the novel first as a name that makes men uneasy and a newspaper portrait that surprises everyone with its gentleness — a thin face, grizzled moustache, intelligent eyes suggesting anything but the monster the press describes. His escape from the asylum sets the whole machinery of dread in motion, drawing Reeder into the case and turning an ordinary seaside boarding house into a place where strangers are scrutinized twice. He never needs to appear on the page to shape it; his absence is the pressure the early chapters breathe under.

Mrs. Burton

minor

Also known as the woman Burton

A faded woman connected to the Flack family.

Chief Inspector Simpson

minor

Also known as Simpson, Inspector Simpson

A senior police officer overseeing the case.

Detective Gray

minor

Also known as Gray

A police detective assisting in the investigation.

Lew Steyne

minor

Also known as Mr. Lew Steyne

A criminal associate with a role in the plot.

Police Officer Dyer

minor

Also known as Dyer, Police Constable Dyer

A uniformed officer on duty at Terror Keep.

Big Bill Gordon

minor

Also known as Big Bill

A large and menacing figure in the criminal world.

Adolphe Victoire

minor

Also known as Victoire

A foreign character with a brief but notable appearance.

Joe Donovan

minor

Also known as Donovan

A minor criminal or associate in the story.

Gregory Dones

minor

Also known as Mr. Gregory Dones

A character with a small role in the narrative.

Rev. Mr. Dean

minor

Also known as Mr. Dean

A clergyman who appears briefly.

Colonel Hothling

minor

Also known as the Colonel

A military figure with a minor role.

Peters

minor

A servant or minor functionary.

Mr. Biggerthorpe

minor

Also known as Biggerthorpe

A character with a very limited appearance.