Character guide

The Narrator

major

Also known as Unknown, I, me, my, mine, myself

He arrives at the Leggetts' as a routine insurance investigator, but his flat, unhurried manner and refusal to be impressed make him a quiet pressure on everyone he questions. He is the reader's only set of eyes, and his skepticism is the engine of the book: he keeps insisting that a curse is a story people tell to cover a more tangible, jailable answer. His stubborn rationality is what Gabrielle will eventually cling to, and what the killer will underestimate.

Gabrielle Leggett

major

Also known as Gabrielle, Gabrielle Collinson, Miss Leggett, Gaby, Leggett, Miss Gabrielle, the girl

Gabrielle is the still point the whole case turns around: the daughter of a man with a buried past, engaged to Eric Collinson, and increasingly convinced that something in her blood is poisonous. She is frightened, suggestible, and self-centered in the way of the very young, which makes her exactly the kind of person a cult can harvest. Her struggle to believe she is not doomed is the emotional spine of the early and middle sections, and every man in the book seems to want something from her.

Owen Fitzstephan

major

Also known as Fitzstephan, Mr. Fitzstephan

Fitzstephan is the narrator's intellectual sparring partner, a man who talks about people the way a collector talks about specimens and who seems to find the Leggett mess more entertaining than it should be. He is close to Alice Leggett, was once close to Gabrielle, and has a habit of appearing with useful information just before it is needed. His friendship with the narrator is the book's most unsettling relationship, because it keeps making the reader ask why a man like that is so interested.

Eric Collinson

major

Also known as Collinson, Eric, young Collinson

Collinson is the respectable, slightly stiff young man who loves Gabrielle and cannot understand what is happening to her, which makes him both sympathetic and easy to maneuver. His telegram from Quesada — urgent, secretive, insistent that Gabrielle must not know — is what drags the narrator out of San Francisco and into the second half of the book. He represents the ordinary life Gabrielle might have, and the plot keeps putting that life under threat.

Minnie Hershey

supporting

Also known as Hershey, Minnie

Minnie is Gabrielle's friend and shadow, loyal in a way that makes her vulnerable to anyone who speaks with enough authority. She becomes entangled in the Temple's machinery — used, dosed, and directed — and her account of what happened on the night of Riese's murder is one of the case's crucial pieces of testimony. She matters because she shows how the Haldorns operate: not by force, but by finding the faithful and pointing them at a target.

Madison Andrews

supporting

Also known as Andrews, Mr. Andrews

Andrews is a legal fixer whose presence at the Jeffries' place in San Mateo, where Aaronia Haldorn is staying, makes him a thread the narrator can pull. He is not a man of violence; he is a man of arrangements, and his movements suggest that someone is still trying to manage the aftermath of the Leggett deaths. His appearances keep the reader aware that the case has a paper trail as well as a body count.

Joseph Haldorn

supporting

Also known as Joseph, Haldorn

Joseph Haldorn runs a small, well-heeled Gaelic-revival church in San Francisco with his wife, Aaronia, and a stage mechanic named Fink, and he has learned that a handful of rich believers is worth more than a mob. His interest in the young Gabrielle Leggett is not entirely financial, and his success at flimflamming his flock has convinced him he can get away with anything. That swelling self-belief is what turns a tidy racket into something far more dangerous.

Aaronia Haldorn

supporting

Also known as Aaronia, Mary Nunez, Nunez

Aaronia Haldorn helps run the Gaelic-revival church alongside her husband, working the machinery of belief from behind the altar. Two discoveries unsettle her: that Joseph's interest in Gabrielle Leggett is not merely financial, and that he has gone off center into a dangerous mania. Her quiet, calculating disillusionment makes her a witness to the cult's unraveling — and a suspect in her own right.

Mrs. Leggett

minor

Also known as Leggett

Gabrielle's mother, deceased before the story begins.

Sheriff Feeney

supporting

Also known as Feeney, Vern

Sheriff Feeney works a one-hotel town pasted on the rocky side of a young mountain above the Pacific, where a telegram from Eric Collinson pulls the Continental Agency into trouble. He is the official authority in a place where the real investigation is being run by outsiders with better instincts. His presence grounds the Quesada chapters in the friction between local procedure and a case that refuses to stay local.

Tom Fink

supporting

Also known as Fink

Fink is the mechanical brain behind the Haldorns' racket, a man who has spent his career in the wings of other people's acts and knows how to adapt gas lines, wiring, and concealed rooms to hocus-pocus. He and his wife — a big, smith-like woman — came west with the cult and remodeled Mrs. Rodman's apartment building into a machine for producing visions. His craft is what gives the cult its eerie authority, and what the detective will eventually have to take apart piece by piece.

Ben Rolly

supporting

Also known as Rolly, Ben, Mr. Rolly

Rolly moves through the early Leggett inquiry as one of the names the Continental Agency turns up while tracing eight small, unmounted diamonds taken from a laboratory. He belongs to the loose network of dealers, fences, and hangers-on that surrounds a theft that looks petty until it isn't. His usefulness to the story is as a thread: pull him and the case widens.

Harvey Whidden

supporting

Also known as Whidden, Harve

Whidden surfaces in the Leggett investigation as someone who knows more about the Dain family than is comfortable for the people trying to keep its history buried. He is the sort of witness a detective hunts down when the official version of a death stops fitting. What he knows about the family's past is the kind of leverage that gets people killed — or gets them to talk.

Mickey Linehan

supporting

Also known as Mick, Linehan

The Continental Agency operative the narrator trusts with the unglamorous legwork, the kind of friend who shows up when a telegram says hurry and danger.

Dick Cotton

supporting

Also known as Cotton, Daisy Cotton

A police officer working the Leggett diamond case alongside the Continental Agency, steady enough to trade notes with a private operative without losing his footing.

Doctor Riese

supporting

Also known as Riese

Gabrielle Leggett's crisp, precise psychiatrist, who taps his black-ribboned glasses against his thumbnail and admits, quietly, that he is not satisfied.

Edgar Leggett

supporting

Also known as Edgar, Ed

A dark-skinned, sharp-lined experimenter in glass and diamonds whose harsh voice and guarded manner suggest a past he keeps off the books.

Rhino Tingley

minor

Also known as Rhino, Tingley

A thug working for the criminal element.

Alice Dain

minor

Also known as Alice, Poor Alice

A deceased member of the Dain family, central to the curse.

O'Gar

minor

A police detective assisting with the case.

MacMan

minor

A minor criminal figure in the story.

Pat Reddy

minor

Also known as Reddy

A police officer working on the case.

Mrs. Collinson

minor

Also known as Mrs. Carter, Carter

Eric Collinson's mother, who remarries into the Carter family.

Ruppert Upton

minor

Also known as Upton, Louis Upton, Harry Ruppert

A criminal associate involved in the diamond theft.

Maurice de Mayenne

minor

Also known as Mayenne

A Frenchman with a connection to the Leggett family.

Mrs. Begg

minor

A housekeeper for the Leggett household.

Mrs. Cotton

minor

Dick Cotton's wife, briefly mentioned.

Ralph Coleman

minor

Also known as the Ralph Colemans

A neighbor of the Leggetts.

Mrs. Herman

minor

A woman who runs a boarding house.

John Edge

minor

Also known as Edge

A lawyer involved in the case.

Lily Dain

minor

Also known as Lily

Another deceased Dain family member.

Halstead

minor

Also known as Watt Halstead

A police officer involved in the investigation.

Mrs. Priestly

minor

A minor character in the narrative.

Jack Santos

minor

Also known as Santos, Mr. Santos

A criminal associate in the story.

Mr. Vernon

minor

Also known as Vernon

The district attorney prosecuting the case.

Eric Carter

minor

Also known as Eric

Mrs. Collinson's son from her second marriage.

Mrs. Livingston Rodman

minor

Also known as Mrs. Rodman

A socialite briefly mentioned.

Hubert Collinson

minor

Also known as old Hubert

Eric Collinson's father.

Quesada

minor

A location name used as a chapter title, not a character.

Mrs. Haldorn

minor

Joseph Haldorn's mother.

Laurence Collinson

minor

Also known as Laurence

Another member of the Collinson family.

Tim

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant.

Jacques Labaud

minor

Also known as Labaud

A Frenchman with a criminal past.

Dick Foley

minor

Also known as Foley

A police detective.

Walter Martin

minor

Also known as Walter

A minor character in the story.

Debro

minor

A minor criminal figure.

Vic Dallas

minor

Also known as Vic, Dallas

A minor character in the narrative.

Elsa

minor

A minor female character.

Mrs. Daley

minor

Also known as Daley

A minor character, possibly a neighbor.

Manuel

minor

A young boy in the story.

Phil Leach

minor

Also known as Phil

A minor character.

Doctor George

minor

Also known as George

A doctor briefly mentioned.

Al Mason

minor

Also known as Al

A minor character.

Mrs. Fink

minor

Tom Fink's wife.

Mr. Carter

minor

Mrs. Collinson's second husband.

Marshal Dick

minor

A law enforcement officer.

Mr. Leggett

minor

A minor reference to a Leggett family member.

Dain

minor

Also known as Mrs. Dain

A deceased member of the Dain family.

Philip Howart

minor

Also known as Howart

A minor character.

Major Jeffries

minor

Also known as Jeffries

A military man briefly mentioned.

McCracken

minor

A minor character.

Mexican Mary

minor

A minor character in the narrative.