Character guide

Dick Martin

major

Also known as Dick, Martin, Richard Martin, Inspector Richard Martin, Sub-Inspector Richard Martin

Dick Martin enters the Selford affair as a man who understands locks and liars alike, hired to trace a wandering lord but drawn instead to a stone door and a lawyer's evasions. He is quick with a pistol and quicker with a lie, cool enough to fire into the dark and call it nerves. His instinct for when he's beaten is what makes him dangerous: he keeps pulling the thread anyway.

Mr. Havelock

supporting

Also known as Arthur Havelock, Arthur Elwood Havelock, Havelock

Arthur Havelock administers the Selford estate with an easy smile and a lawyer's command of every document the late lord left behind. He insists the sealed cell is a mystery to him too, yet he has never once asked permission to force it, and his hand trembles at the rail when the storm breaks. His composure is the story's most polished surface, and the first thing a careful reader learns to distrust.

Sybil Lansdown

major

Also known as Miss Lansdown, Sybil, Miss Sybil Lansdown

Sybil Lansdown stands next in law to a fortune she has never touched, and it is her request that first opens the Sellforde tomb to Dick Martin's lantern. She is brave enough to walk into the storm and frightened enough to cling to the nearest steady shoulder when a half-naked figure crashes through the rhododendrons. Her claim on the estate is the legal hinge on which the whole conspiracy turns.

Lord Selford

major

Also known as the late Lord Selford, Selford, the absent Lord Selford, the new Lord Selford, Young Lord Selford

Lord Selford exists in the novel mostly as handwriting, a birthmark, and a lisp — a thin-faced man who writes faithfully to his solicitor and never quite comes home. Havelock has seen him at intervals and swears the letters are genuine, yet deeds never arrive and the money keeps flowing out. Whether he is a wandering eccentric or something far worse is the question the whole plot is built to answer.

Thomas Cawler

supporting

Also known as Tommy Cawler, Tommy, Tom, Mr. Cawler, Mr. Tom Cawler, Cawler

Tom Cawler is the kind of man who shows up on a hotel balcony at the wrong moment and gets snapped by a press photographer, which is how Dick Martin learns he was being led on a fool's errand. He is a messenger, a decoy, and — by the end — a brother to a man who was handed over to a doctor's experiments as a child. His small, careless appearances are the loose threads that unravel the entire deception.

Inspector Sneed

major

Also known as Sneed, Chief Inspector John Sneed of Scotland Yard, Captain Sneed, Mr. Sneed

Sneed arrives in the story as a figure of almost insulting calm, watching flames roar from barred windows while Havelock screams for the women inside. That apathy is a mask: the moment he knocks out his pipe, he becomes a competent police official and takes Arthur Havelock into custody on a charge of murder. He is the law's slow, deliberate hand closing on a crime that has been running for years.

Antonio Stalletti

supporting

Also known as Stalletti, Mr. Stalletti, Dr. Stalletti, Dr. Antonio Stalletti, Professor Stalletti

Stalletti never appears in the library scene where his thin, diagram-crammed book goes missing, yet his name does all the work: the police know him, the secretary panicked, and the lady librarian waves the theft away as beneath notice. His blend of crank biology and legal trouble makes him the story's first real question mark, and the address he leaves behind — Gallows Cottage, Sussex — pulls Dick Martin out of routine detective work and toward the locked door that gives the book its title.

Bertram Cody

supporting

Also known as Mr. Bertram Cody, Mr. Cody, Bertie, Cody, Elbert, Bertram, Dr. Cody

Dick Martin visits Cody on business and leaves with more than he bargained for, having palmed the flat leather book from under the man's papers out of sheer devilment. Inside is a key almost identical to the one Sybil showed him on the train — the same key that unknown men have already gone to violent expense to recover. Cody's flat denial of any link to Lord Selford, set against the evidence in Dick's pocket, makes him the hinge on which the mystery of the seven locks first swings open.

Lew Pheeney

supporting

Also known as Lew, Pheeney, Poor Lew, Mr. Pheeney

Pheeney's coerced work at the stone door — seven circular bosses, a carved skeleton on each pillar, a curse on whoever mocks — surfaces in Dick Martin's mind the moment he finally sees the thing for himself. Whatever Pheeney did there, he did it in terror, and the memory of that fear shadows the whole approach to the Selford vault. He matters because he proves the door has already been tampered with by men willing to kill, turning an ancestral curiosity into an active conspiracy.

Mrs. Bertram Cody

minor

Also known as Mrs. Cody, Cody

The wife of Bertram Cody, involved in the household drama.

Mrs. Lansdown

minor

Also known as XII Mrs. Lansdown, Presently Mrs. Lansdown

Sybil Lansdown's mother, a concerned parent.

Slick

minor

A shady character with underworld ties.

John Pierce

minor

Also known as Pierce, Mr. John Pierce, the restless Mr. Pierce

A restless individual involved in the investigation.

Silva

minor

Also known as Senhor Silva

A foreigner with a possible connection to the mystery.

John Rendle

minor

Also known as Mr. John Rendle, Mr. Rendle, Rendle

A man with a claim or interest in the Selford estate.

Mrs. Cawler

minor

Also known as Dear Mrs. Cawler, Cawler

Thomas Cawler's mother, a minor character.

Gregory Lansdown

minor

Also known as Gregory

A relative of Sybil Lansdown.

Johnny

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or associate.

Jenny

minor

Also known as Poor Jinny

A woman with a tragic story connected to the plot.

Sir Hugh

minor

Also known as Hugh

A titled gentleman who appears briefly.

Jane Allen

minor

A woman mentioned in connection with the case.

Old Lord Selford

minor

The previous Lord Selford, referenced in backstory.