Character guide

Prince Rénine

major

Also known as Serge Rénine, Prince Serge Rénine, Prince

Rénine drifts into the Château de la Marèze as a guest nobody can quite place, and by the time Hortense Daniel tries to flee her marriage he has already taken an interest in her predicament. He is unhurried, faintly amused, and impossible to read — a man who seems to know more about the company than he lets on. His habit of turning up exactly when a mystery needs solving makes him the engine of the book's investigations.

Hortense Daniel

major

Also known as Madame d’Aigleroche, Madame Daniel, Madame d’Imbleval, Madame d’Ormeval

Hortense Daniel is bored enough to risk everything: she arranges to run off with the hapless Rossigny rather than keep fighting her uncle and aunt over a squandered dowry. Her nerve and quick tongue make her more than a damsel in distress, and Rénine recognizes a kindred appetite for danger. As his partner in investigation she supplies both the impulse to act and the moral pressure that keeps their inquiries honest.

Dalbrèque

supporting

Also known as Georges, Georges Dalbrèque

Dalbrèque is wanted for robbing a film company's garage and for a jeweller's murder the year before, and now a woman has vanished from Le Havre in his company. What makes him unsettling is the theatrical logic of his crimes: he seems to be reenacting a role he once played on screen, near the very forest where it was filmed. His flight becomes the thread that leads the investigators toward Rose Andrée and the truth behind the abduction.

Jérôme Vignal

supporting

Also known as Jérôme, Vignal

Vignal moves through the de Gorne affair as a figure whose testimony matters and whose motives are murky, entangled with a household already shadowed by suspicion. He is the kind of witness who seems helpful until you notice what he leaves out, and his relationship to the dead man's family complicates every question Rénine asks. His evasions are what turn a straightforward death into a puzzle worth pulling apart.

Mathias de Gorne

supporting

Also known as M. Mathias, de Gorne, old de Gorne, Mathias, M. de Gorne

Old de Gorne is the still center around which the household's suspicions and resentments revolve, and his death is the event that forces everyone else into the open. The details surrounding his end — the water bottle, the locked room, the timing — refuse to add up, and the family's eagerness to call it natural only deepens the doubt. His absence shapes the early arc more than his presence ever could.

Rose Andrée

supporting

Also known as Rose

Rose Andrée is on the verge of an American film career when she disappears, her luggage registered and her passage paid but her cabin never occupied. Her connection to the forest of Brotonne, where she once shot a picture, gives Rénine the geographic clue that cracks the case open. She is both the victim and the key: the woman whose absence drives the search and whose past explains why she was taken.

Dutreuil

supporting

Also known as Gaston Dutreuil, M. Dutreuil

Gaston Dutreuil arrives at Rénine's door stammering that Jacques Aubrieux is innocent, yet offers no evidence beyond loyalty and outrage. He leads Rénine and Hortense into a Neuilly household where two weeping women have spent months certain that innocence alone must save a man from the scaffold. His helpless devotion matters because it is the human engine of the case: a friend's faith against a court's verdict, and the first thread Rénine must pull.

Jacques Aubrieux

supporting

Also known as Jacques, Jacques d’Ormeval

Jacques Aubrieux never appears in the room, only in the testimony of those who love him: his wife, her mother, and his oldest friend. He was an insurance-broker whose luck turned, whose cousin Guillaume was killed for sixty thousand francs, and whose guilt the court accepted while his household refused it. That gap between verdict and conviction is the mystery Rénine must close, and Jacques's fate gives the early case its unbearable clock.

Jean Louis

supporting

Also known as Jean Louis Vaurois, Jean Louis d’Imbleval, Vaurois, Jean, Louis, Louis d’Imbleval, Jean Vaurois

Jean Louis surfaces under a cluster of identities — Vaurois, d'Imbleval — as though his own name were the least reliable thing about him. Accused of a crime he did not commit, he belongs to that recurring Leblanc figure: the young man whose innocence must be proven by someone cleverer than the police. His shifting names and threatened future give the middle stories their pressure, and his fate tests whether Rénine's methods can actually save a life.

V Thérèse

supporting

Also known as Thérèse, Thérèse d’Ormeval

Thérèse d'Ormeval enters the cycle as a woman whose identity is itself the puzzle — a name that connects to other names, a history that refuses to stay buried. She is bound to the d'Ormeval thread that runs through the Aubrieux case and beyond, so that meeting her feels like meeting a solution disguised as a person. Her presence matters because in Leblanc's world the woman with a hidden identity is rarely a victim and rarely innocent of knowing more than she says.

Germaine

supporting

Also known as Germaine Astaing, Astaing

Germaine Astaing belongs to the cycle's recurring nightmare: a person whose identity has been assumed by another, so that her own life becomes evidence in a case she never chose. Mistaken identity is not a misunderstanding here but a weapon, and Germaine is both its target and, potentially, its unraveling. She matters because proving who she is forces Rénine to prove what actually happened, and the two proofs cannot be separated.

de Lourtier - Vaneau

supporting

Also known as M. de Lourtier - Vaneau, M. de Lourtier, de Lourtier

De Lourtier-Vaneau represents the machinery of justice as it actually operates: methodical, credentialed, and persistently one step behind the truth. He investigates the crimes that Rénine solves, which makes him less an antagonist than a foil — the man whose authority Rénine must work around or through. His presence gives the stories their institutional texture, reminding the reader that behind every elegant deduction stands a real courtroom, a real dossier, and a real official who got it wrong.

Madame Astaing

supporting

Also known as Madame d’Ormeval

Madame d'Ormeval — Thérèse to her husband — moves through the Hôtel Hauville as one half of a couple everyone calls perfectly happy, writing letters while Jacques reads his papers in a rented cabin by the cliff. Yet her unsmiling profile carries an expression of sadness and suffering, and her small, careful exchanges with her husband draw the attention of two strangers who have come looking for a wife in danger. Whether she is victim or something stranger, her quiet composure is the puzzle the early investigation turns on.

Rossigny

supporting

Also known as M. Rossigny, M. d’Aigleroche

Rossigny waits in the shrubbery beneath Hortense's window, catches her luggage, and agrees to meet her at the If crossroads with his car — a fat man with honourable intentions and a hopeless passion he states plainly. He distrusts the newly arrived Prince Rénine and questions why a stranger has been invited to the Château de la Marèze. His readiness to run off with a woman who admits she does not love him sets the first adventure in motion and makes him an unwitting piece in a game he cannot see.

Pancaldi

minor

Also known as Madame Pancaldi, M. Pancaldi

A couple involved in a theatrical performance.

Geneviève Aymard

minor

Also known as Geneviève, Aymard

A woman whose past is revealed through a film.

Mr. Deputy

minor

A deputy involved in legal proceedings.

Boussignol

minor

Also known as Mlle . Boussignol, Nurse Boussignol

A nurse who provides care to a key character.

Madeleine Aubrieux

minor

Also known as Madeleine, Aubrieux

The wife of Jacques Aubrieux.

Madame de Gorne

minor

Also known as old de Gorne

The wife of Mathias de Gorne.

Madame Vaurois

minor

Also known as Madame d’Imbleval, Vaurois, the widowed Madame Vaurois

The mother of Jean Louis.

M. Dudouis

minor

Also known as M. d’Ormeval

A police official who works on the cases.

Natalie de Gorne

minor

Also known as old de Gorne, Natalie

A relative of the de Gorne family.

Félicienne

minor

A young woman who appears in a later story.

Covereau

minor

Also known as Mlle . Covereau, Herminie

A woman whose identity is linked to a mystery.

Mr. Inspector

minor

A police inspector investigating a crime.

Madame Aubrieux

minor

The mother of Jacques Aubrieux.

Williamson

minor

Also known as a Miss Hermione Williamson, Miss Williamson, Hermione

An Englishwoman involved in a case.

Morisseau

minor

Also known as M. Morisseau, Inspector Morisseau

A police inspector who assists in investigations.

Adolphe

minor

A servant in the de Gorne household.

the doctor

minor

A physician who examines a body.

M. Vignal

minor

The father of Jérôme Vignal.

M. Guillaume

minor

A man who provides information to the police.

Hermance

minor

A maid in the de Gorne household.

Frédéric Astaing

minor

Also known as Frédéric

The husband of Germaine Astaing.

Mercury

minor

A statue that is central to a mystery.

Arsène Lupin

minor

A legendary gentleman thief mentioned in passing.

Honorine Vernisset

minor

Also known as Vernisset, little Vernisset, Honorine

A young woman who disappears.

Ermelin

minor

A servant in a household.

Madame de Lourtier

minor

Also known as de Lourtier

The wife of the magistrate de Lourtier.

Madame Boussignol

minor

The mother of Nurse Boussignol.

Madame Ladoue

minor

Also known as Ladoue

A woman who provides lodging.

Suzanne

minor

A young woman briefly mentioned.