Character guide

Larry Hughes

major

Also known as Larry, friend Larry, Mr. Larry Hughes, Hughes, Mr. Hughes

To the world Larry Hughes is a cultivated gentleman of leisure, impeccable enough that any officer who dared haul him to a cell would face a ruinous suit for damages. To Labar and police circles worldwide, he is the audacious, ingenious mind behind half the professional crime in his division, running theft like big business through intermediaries who never touch the loot. He is the wall Labar must break, and the early chapters make clear that breaking him will be a man's-size job.

Harry Labar

major

Also known as Labar, Mr. Labar, Divisional Detective Inspector Labar, Detective Inspector Labar, Inspector Labar

Labar works the Stebbins shooting and the Streetly House robbery with patient, unglamorous craft — cordoning houses, searching a drunk gunman with his own hands, deferring questions until he's had eight hours' sleep. He knows Larry is guilty and knows he cannot prove it, a tension his friend Moreland needles him about constantly. His anonymous letter about Mrs. G. and her bookmaker's debts is the thread that pulls the Gertstein scandal into the case, making him the story's engine.

Penelope Noelson

major

Also known as Miss Penelope Noelson, Miss Noelson, Pen, Donna Quixote Penelope

Penelope has been spirited into Larry's country retreat, where she and the newly arrived Adèle Gertstein are told they are allies in a common cause — their own safety. Her curiosity is all aflame as she weighs whether Adèle's arrival bodes good or evil for her own case, and she dares not ask the questions burning in her. She is the reader's eyes inside the enemy's house, alert to every shift in Larry's bland, threatening hospitality.

Adèle Gertstein

major

Also known as Mrs. Gertstein, Adèle, Gertstein, the wealthy Mrs. Gertstein, Mrs. Gertstein Labar

Adèle reclines on the terrace of Maid's Retreat doing the thinking she hates, because a blackmailer wants five thousand pounds within the week or he goes to her husband Solly. She writes to Larry begging the money 'for the sake of old times,' hinting that publicity would embarrass him too, and coolly notes that Penelope has vanished. Her letter, intercepted by Labar, cracks the case open — she is both quarry and lever, and her recklessness keeps the plot tilting.

Solly Gertstein

supporting

Also known as Mr. Solly Gertstein, Mr. Gertstein, Gertstein, Mr. S. Gertstein

Solly calls Maid's Retreat twice a day to wail about the Streetly House robbery and frets over Penelope's disappearance, fond and anxious and entirely unaware of what his wife is hiding. Labar and Superintendent Marlow recognise that if Gertstein learns how a scandal might reach him, he could deliberately gum up the investigation to hush it. He never appears on the page directly, but his money, his devotion, and his potential interference shape every move the police make.

Moreland

supporting

Also known as Mr. Moreland, Detective Inspector Moreland, the irrepressible Moreland, Inspector Moreland

Moreland punctures Labar's theorising with the hard question — what if the crook has men, money, and brains too, and can foresee every move? He warns Labar that the abduction charge may collapse if the lady says she went willingly, and that he's playing a losing hand against Larry. Yet he is the trusted sounding board to whom Labar shows the anonymous letter about Mrs. G., making him the reader's window into the inspector's hunches and the case's real risks.

Sophie Lengholm

supporting

Also known as Sophie, old Sophie Lengholm, Sophie Lengholm ere

Sophie Lengholm belongs to the shadowy earlier history of the Gertstein affair, a figure Labar must look up before he can even place her. Bred to an ingrained distrust and contempt of all police officers, she parries his offer of friendship with wary, joyless laughter, sensing a trap where he claims only to want to let her down lightly. Her guarded knowledge of what Larry once tried to do makes her a quiet hinge in the investigation's middle stretch.

Gold Dust Teddy

supporting

Also known as Teddy

Gold Dust Teddy is a sobered-up rogue who accepts arrest with the philosophy of a man who knows the police are merely doing a job, though he bristles at being roughed up without cause. Puffy-eyed and hard-faced yet oddly respectable in appearance, he protests that he has tried to run straight and demands to know why the law keeps hounding a bloke like him. Labar's velvety hints about alibis and juries turn the interview into a delicate contest of nerve that matters to the case's middle act.

Stebbins

supporting

Also known as Mr. Stebbins

Stebbins is a minor thief nearly forgotten by the police, lacking the imagination or skill of more successful rogues, who washes windows at a restaurant until Billy Bungey stumbles across him at a race meeting. Flattered by the condescension of a race-gang leader, he accepts ten pounds a week and the promise of five hundred more, then lingers at Streetly House because of a maid when he should have thrown up the job. His patient account of wax impressions and tinkered keys gives Labar the mechanics of the raid.

Malone

supporting

Also known as Mr. Malone, Bill Malone, Bill, Detective Sergeant Malone, friend Malone

Malone works the case alongside Labar, and his fruitless trip to Goodwood with the bank cashier costs the inspector an expected identification of Mrs. Gertstein. Steady rather than brilliant, he is the man Labar trusts to investigate a story of two men lurking at a farm outside Rye, taking a dozen men roped in from Mope's Bottom. His absence from the house when the others arrive leaves the pursuit in motion and keeps the hunt for Larry Hughes alive.

Tom

minor

Also known as Tom the valet

A valet who serves in the household.

Bill Bungey

minor

Also known as Bill, Billy Bungey, Billy, Bungey

A minor character with a distinct name.

Winter

minor

Also known as Mr. Winter

A character who speaks dryly, possibly a witness.

Marlow

minor

Also known as Both Marlow

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

John

minor

Also known as this John

A minor character referenced briefly.

Dave Cummings

minor

Also known as Cummings, Dave

A minor character with a few mentions.

Dickie

minor

A minor character mentioned briefly.

Dr. Ware

minor

Also known as Ware

A doctor who appears in the story.

Myson

minor

A minor character with a few proper mentions.

Mrs. Lengholm

minor

A relative or associate of Sophie Lengholm.

Mope

minor

A minor character with a peculiar name.

Heath

minor

A minor character mentioned in passing.

Bonnie Chevalier

minor

A named minor character.

Down

minor

A minor character with a surname.

Simmons

minor

A minor character mentioned in the narrative.

James Smith

minor

Also known as Jim, Smith

A minor character with a common name.

Marr

minor

A minor character with few mentions.

Mrs. G.

minor

A minor character referred to by initial.