Character guide

Arthur Burdon

major

Also known as Burdon, Mr. Arthur Burdon, Mr. Burdon

Arthur Burdon is a young English surgeon of growing reputation, engaged to Margaret Dauncey after a long, patient courtship, and visiting Paris to study French methods and finally set a wedding date. He is narrow but honest, brilliant at the operating table and awkward everywhere else, a man who believes the world yields to skill and hard work. That very confidence makes him easy prey for what he cannot dissect, and his love for Margaret becomes the fault line along which the story's trouble enters.

Margaret Dauncey

major

Also known as Miss Margaret, Poor Margaret, Miss Dauncey

Margaret Dauncey is a young Englishwoman whose physical perfection first drew Arthur Burdon to her, and whose delight in art and the variety of life sets her apart from his practical narrowness. She is grateful, affectionate, and a little unformed, still growing into her own tastes during the Paris years she asked for before marrying. Her openness to beauty is exactly what makes her vulnerable to a man who offers her something larger and stranger than a surgeon's steady love.

Susie Boyd

major

Also known as Susan Boyd, Miss Susie, Miss Boyd

Susie Boyd is Margaret's friend and chaperone in Paris, a woman with a merciless eye for pretension and a warm loyalty to those she loves. She moves easily among the students and painters of the Chien Noir, dissecting poseurs with gaiety, yet her affection for Margaret makes her attentive to dangers others dismiss. As the story darkens, Susie becomes the one who keeps asking questions, pressing Dr. Porhoët for answers when everyone else prefers not to look.

Oliver Haddo

major

Also known as Haddo, Mr. Haddo

Oliver Haddo is a mountainous, ostentatiously dressed man who arrives at the Chien Noir declaiming in execrable French and treating the room as his stage. Once a beautiful and unpopular Oxford undergraduate, he has grown fat, bald, and grandiose, cultivating a reputation for occult learning that most take as performance. He is vain, cruel, and unnervingly patient, and his interest in Margaret and in Arthur's complacent happiness is the engine that turns a Paris idyll into something far darker.

Dr. Porhoët

supporting

Also known as Porhoët, V Dr. Porhoët, The good Dr. Porhoët

Dr. Porhoët is a retired physician and family friend who has watched Arthur Burdon grow from a boy in Alexandria into a celebrated surgeon. He is a man of wide reading and gentle irony, drawn to strange characters and stranger manuscripts, yet careful never to commit himself to a definite opinion about the occult. His cautious 'perhaps' becomes the story's central question, and his knowledge of what the old wizards attempted makes him both guide and warning to those around him.

Frank Hurrell

supporting

Also known as Hurrell

Frank Hurrell is a medical friend of Arthur Burdon who joins him in the grim journey to Skene and the vigil that follows. He is steady, practical, and loyal, the kind of companion who helps hold a horse and a friend's nerve at the same time. His presence grounds Arthur's grief-stricken schemes in ordinary human support, and his willingness to stay through the fasting and the waiting shows what friendship costs when reason has run out.

Dr. Richardson

minor

A London physician who treats Margaret during her illness.

Mrs. Haddo

minor

Oliver Haddo's mother, a wealthy and domineering woman.

Marie Porhoët

minor

Also known as O Marie, Jeanne-Marie Porhoët

Dr. Porhoët's deceased wife, mentioned in his reminiscences.

Clayson

minor

Also known as O Clayson

A fellow medical student and acquaintance of Arthur Burdon.

Arbuthnot

minor

A friend of Arthur's from the medical school circle.

Burkhardt

minor

A German occultist and acquaintance of Oliver Haddo.

Warren

minor

Also known as Monsieur Warren, Mr. Warren

An English expatriate living in Paris, friend of Dr. Porhoët.

Young Raggles

minor

Also known as Raggles

A medical student and friend of Arthur's in London.

Madame Meyer

minor

Also known as Meyer

A Parisian landlady who rents rooms to Arthur and his friends.

Mrs. Bloomfield

minor

A London acquaintance of Margaret Dauncey's family.

Madame Rouge

minor

Also known as Rouge

A Parisian fortune-teller consulted by Susie Boyd.

Skene

minor

A Scottish occultist and associate of Oliver Haddo.

Lesebren

minor

A French occultist mentioned in Dr. Porhoët's circle.