# The Borough Treasurer — Character guide

> Key figures in The Borough Treasurer by J. S. Fletcher.

- [Mr. Mallalieu](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_mallalieu.md): Mallalieu is a big, prosperous figure accustomed to deference, now wholly dependent on his sly keeper Chris Pett for news of the town and of himself. His temper flares at confinement, and his one raw nerve is the word mu
- [Mr. Brereton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_brereton.md): Brereton arrives as an outsider with legal instincts and a barrister's habit of watching faces, and he is quickly pulled from the courtroom into a private meeting of solicitors and detectives. Curious to the point of eag
- [Lettie Cotherstone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/lettie_cotherstone.md): Lettie is the centre of her father's anxious love and the reason his dread of exposure cuts so deep; she is engaged to Windle Bent, a man resolved on a career. Cheerful and practical, she telephones her father to remind 
- [Mr. Cotherstone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_cotherstone.md): Cotherstone is one half of a long partnership with Mallalieu, a builder proud of his stone house and his standing, yet haunted by something Kitely knew. When the crowd brands him a liar and a self-saver, he answers with 
- [Miss Pett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/miss_pett.md): Miss Pett belongs to the small, watchful circle around Kitely's estate, and Brereton's remark that she 'won't be exactly surprised' by the will suggests she has her own reading of the dead man. She and her nephew Christo
- [Bert Stoner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/bert_stoner.md): Stoner sits drinking whisky in company when old Mr. Pursey mentions he once knew the murdered Kitely, and Stoner's excitement is barely contained as he draws out the tale of Mallows and Chidforth, two trusted young workm
- [Mr. Kitely](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_kitely.md): A retired man of secrets whose silence Cotherstone would pay dearly for, and whose tongue proves deadlier than any ledger.
- [Christopher Pett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/christopher_pett.md): A small, sly solicitor with long white fingers and a steel-trap client, he parcels out Kitely's estate and his own careful evasions with equal neatness.
- [John Harborough](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/john_harborough.md): A poacher and enigma whom Highmarket cannot quite account for, charged with a murder that anonymous money insists he did not commit.
- [Avice Harborough](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/avice_harborough.md): A well-educated, watchful daughter who has grown up around her father's silences and now must hold her nerve while the town decides what he is.
- [Mr. Bent](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_bent.md): A young solicitor with family pride and political ambitions, drawn into a murder case that keeps threatening to touch his own respectable name.
- [Mr. Carfax](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_carfax.md): A well-travelled solicitor who arrives with an alibi, a hidden heir, and the calm of a man who has already read the last page.
- [Mrs. Hamthwaite](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mrs_hamthwaite.md): An elderly woman who provides local gossip.
- [David Myler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/david_myler.md): A servant or employee of the Mallalieu family.
- [Tallington Brereton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/tallington_brereton.md): Brereton moves through the case as its legal intelligence, the man who must know every detail of Mallows and Chidforth's crime and be able to summarize it coldly. What grips him is not the guilt but the gap: two thousand
- [Mr. Garthwaite](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_garthwaite.md): A local businessman and associate of Cotherstone.
- [Mr. Wraythwaite](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_wraythwaite.md): Wraythwaite is a fine fellow on the verge of doing great things for Harborough and his daughter, which is precisely why the past rattling the present terrifies him. His instinct is to rush to Highmarket and tell everythi
- [The Doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/the_doctor.md): The local physician who examines the victim.
- [Lawyer Tallington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/lawyer_tallington.md): A solicitor involved in the legal proceedings.
- [Mr. Pursey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/mr_pursey.md): An old man who provides information to the police.
- [Councillor Northrop](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_borough_treasurer_se/characters/councillor_northrop.md): A town councillor with a role in local politics.

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