Character guide

Frank Spargo

major

Also known as Mr. Spargo, Mr. Frank Spargo, young Master Spargo

Spargo works the Marbury case from the outside in, badgering barristers, chasing stamp dealers, and refusing to accept the easy verdict. What sets him apart is his willingness to tell a friend the brutal truth — that Ronald Breton's real name is Maitland and the murdered man was his father — and then prove it, word by word. His doggedness drives the investigation forward even when Scotland Yard stalls, making him the engine of the novel's middle act.

Ronald Breton

major

Also known as Mr. Breton, young Mr. Breton, Mr. Ronald Breton

Breton moves easily through Middle Temple society — he knows Cardlestone, he visits Elphick, he has a guardian and a fiancée and a settled future. That world tilts when Spargo tells him his real name is Maitland and the dead man is his father, and he absorbs the blow with hard, methodical calm rather than collapse. His composure under revelation, and his loyalty to the guardian who may be complicit, make him the story's emotional anchor.

John Marbury

major

Also known as Mr. Marbury, the late Mr. John Marbury

Known in death as John Marbury, he is in fact John Maitland, a man who went to prison decades ago in a small country town and returned from Australia wealthy and unrecognized. He carried rare stamps, a silver ticket, and an errand to find a boy — and within hours of his arrival someone silenced him. The gap between his careful anonymity and the violence of his death is the mystery every character in the book is trying to close.

Mr. Rathbury

supporting

Also known as Rathbury

Rathbury works the case by the book, taking statements from city men like Myerst and tolerating Spargo's parallel inquiries with a mixture of professional courtesy and skepticism. He is competent but conventional, more comfortable with procedure than with the tangle of old secrets the case keeps unearthing. His steady police presence grounds the early investigation, and his willingness to share information with Spargo keeps the two men in productive tension.

Mother Gutch

supporting

Also known as Mother Gutch Spargo, Mrs. Sabina Gutch

Once Jane Baylis's housekeeper, Mother Gutch now lives on sufferance in the same boardinghouse, kept close because she knows too much. She trades her secret — that Maitland's boy is not dead, and that she knows what Baylis did with him — for coin and gin, her cunning sharpening as she drinks. She is the novel's most disreputable informant and its most decisive one, cracking open the case from below.

Mr. E. Myerst

supporting

Also known as Mr. Myerst, Myerst

Myerst arrives at Rathbury's office with the respectable air of a city man and the news that Marbury rented a safe and deposited an ancient leather box. Later, his cold remark that a dead man's secret has died with him — and his needling of old Elphick — reveals something harder beneath the frock coat. He is the kind of witness who seems helpful and leaves the reader uneasy, a respectable surface over an unclear motive.

John Maitland

supporting

Also known as Maitland, John Maitland of Market Milcaster

Maitland was a Market Milcaster man who went to prison and left behind a ruined family, a vanished son, and a fortune nobody could trace. His sister-in-law Jane Baylis speaks of him with cold contempt, while old Elphick insists with strange heat that Maitland never killed anyone. Whether he is the murdered man in the mortuary or the murderer everyone is hunting, his shadow lies across every clue Spargo turns up.

Septimus Elphick

supporting

Also known as Mr. Elphick, old Elphick, Mr. Septimus Elphick

Elphick is Ronald Breton's guardian and the quieter half of a stamp-collecting pair with old Cardlestone, a punctual man who never misses an appointment. When Spargo arrives at his chambers to hear what he knows about the Marbury affair, the door is shut and the old man is simply gone. His disappearance turns a newspaper story into something personal for Breton and raises the question of what Elphick was afraid to say aloud.

Jane Baylis

supporting

Also known as Miss Baylis, Miss Jane Baylis

Miss Baylis is the woman who took in Maitland's son after his imprisonment and who claims she showed the disgraced man the door when he came asking for the boy. She despises Maitland for tricking her sister into marriage and robbing them both, and she will not soften her account for Spargo's benefit. Her cold certainty about Maitland's bad end makes her both a useful witness and a suspicious one, since Market Milcaster gossips say she was in on the money.

Benjamin Quarterpage

supporting

Also known as Mr. Quarterpage, old Quarterpage, old Mr. Quarterpage, Old Ben Quarterpage

Mr. Quarterpage is the sort of country gentleman who breakfasts at nine sharp, keeps his racing books framed on the wall, and can name every holder of the town's old silver tickets from memory. He takes a genial interest in Spargo's odd possession of one such ticket and offers to trace its history over breakfast. His recollections of the Chamberlayne scandal and the town's stubborn belief that the coffin held lead give Spargo his first real thread into the past.

Nicholas Cardlestone

supporting

Also known as Mr. Cardlestone, old Cardlestone, Mr. Nicholas Cardlestone

Cardlestone is one of the most accomplished stamp collectors in Europe, a quiet old man who shares late nights of piquet and philately with his friend Elphick. The murdered Marbury was carrying Cardlestone's name and address when he died, yet Cardlestone swears he never knew the man and went with Elphick to the mortuary only out of curiosity. His rooms, his stairs, and his silence sit at the exact center of the mystery Spargo is trying to untangle.

Stephen Chamberlayne

supporting

Also known as Chamberlayne, the Chamberlayne, Stephen

Stephen Chamberlayne was the young man who summoned doctors and solicitors when his uncle died suddenly at the Cosmopolitan, saw the death certified as a diseased heart, and buried the body without an inquest. Within a year he had vanished abroad, along with the solicitor and the doctor, leaving Market Milcaster to gossip that the coffin might hold lead rather than a man. His convenient disappearance is the loose thread Spargo pulls when he begins to suspect the whole Chamberlayne story was staged.

James Criedir

minor

Also known as Jim, Mr. James Criedir, Mr. Criedir, Criedir

A young man from Market Milcaster with a connection to the Aylmore family.

Mr. Webster

minor

Also known as Webster, William Webster

A police constable assisting Rathbury in the investigation.

Edward Mollison

minor

Also known as Mollison

A solicitor involved in the legal aspects of the case.

Jessie Aylmore

minor

Also known as Miss Aylmore, Miss Jessie Aylmore, Jessie, Evelyn Aylmore

The daughter of Stephen Aylmore, romantically linked to Ronald Breton.

Stephen Aylmore

minor

Also known as Mr. Aylmore, Mr. Stephen Aylmore, Aylmore

A wealthy businessman and father of Jessie, questioned in the case.

Mr. Walters

minor

Also known as Mrs. Walters, Walters, Mr. and Mrs. Walters

A couple who keep a lodging house where Spargo stays.

David Lyell

minor

Also known as Mr. Lyell, Mr. David Lyell

A friend of the Aylmore family, provides information about Marbury.

Crowfoot

minor

Also known as old Crowfoot

An old man in Market Milcaster who remembers past events.

Mr. Cooper

minor

A clerk or assistant in the legal offices involved in the case.

Mr. Kaye

minor

Also known as Kaye

A man who appears in the later chapters of the investigation.

Mr. Lummis

minor

Also known as Lummis

A man briefly mentioned in the stamp dealing subplot.

Constable Driscoll

minor

Also known as Driscoll

A police constable who makes an arrest in the case.

Charles Doolittle

minor

Also known as Mr. Charles Doolittle, Mr. Doolittle

A man who identifies Marbury's body at the mortuary.

Mr. Anderson

minor

Also known as Anderson

A manager at the Anglo-Orient Hotel where Marbury stayed.

Mr. Stephens

minor

A man who provides information about the Chamberlayne affair.

Stephen Ainsworth

minor

Also known as Ainsworth

A name mentioned in connection with the Chamberlayne scandal.

Mr. Fiskie

minor

Also known as Fiskie

A man who appears briefly in the investigation.

Andrew Robertson

minor

Also known as Robertson

A man from Market Milcaster with knowledge of the Maitland family.

Starkey

minor

A man mentioned in connection with the stamp dealing subplot.

Templeson

minor

A servant or employee in the Aylmore household.

Mr. Vallas

minor

Also known as old Mr. Vallas, old Vallas

An elderly man from Market Milcaster who knows the Maitlands.

Mr. Stonewood

minor

A man briefly mentioned in connection with the case.