Character guide

Hercule Poirot

major

Also known as Poirot, M. Poirot, M. Hercule Poirot, Papa Poirot, Monsieur Poirot

Poirot arrives at the Villa Geneviève expecting a quiet holiday and finds instead a stabbed millionaire, a spade-dug grave, and a rival detective he despises. His methods are theatrical and his pride is boundless, but his real weapon is psychology: he reads a two-foot clue as keenly as a two-inch one, and suspects everyone, including the victim. As the case deepens, he must untangle a crime built on another man's cleverness, and his certainty that heredity and character never lie drives the investigation forward.

Captain Hastings

major

Also known as Arthur Hastings, Hastings

Hastings accompanies Poirot to France and promptly falls for two young women in as many days, a weakness Poirot teases mercilessly. He is brave, decent, and hopelessly impetuous, forever proposing solutions that Poirot demolishes with a sigh and a 'mon ami.' His running commentary gives the investigation its human texture, and his misreadings of the case let readers test their own deductions against the master's.

Paul Renauld

major

Also known as M. Renauld, Renauld, M. Paul Renauld, old Mr. Renauld

Renauld is the murdered man whose secret life sets the whole plot in motion: a millionaire with a beautiful neighbor, a nervous wife, and a son he means to separate from the girl he loves. He summons Poirot by letter, then dies before the detective can reach him, leaving behind a story of masked intruders and a mysterious 'secret.' His carefully constructed plans to escape his past become the very blueprint his killer uses, making him both victim and unwitting accomplice.

Jack Renauld

major

Also known as M. Jack Renauld, Jack, young Renauld, M. Renauld fils

Jack is the heir whose love affair with Marthe Daubreuil his father forbids, and whose hidden engagement to Bella Duveen gives him two reasons to be suspected. He arrives at the villa the night of the murder, flees in confusion, and finds himself the obvious suspect when the daggers and the inheritance are counted. His divided loyalties and his father's criminal blood make him the case's most painful question: is he a grieving son or a parricide?

Mrs. Renauld

major

Also known as Madame Renauld, Elinor Renauld

Madame Renauld survives the attack that kills her husband and gives the police their first account: masked men, a secret, a demand for papers. She is a great woman, Poirot observes, playing her part with such resolute anguish that no one suspects how much she is hiding. Her composure under interrogation and her willingness to admit her husband's mistress to protect a deeper secret make her the emotional center of the case and the key to its most guarded truth.

Bella Duveen

major

Also known as Duveen, Bella, Miss Bella Duveen, Miss Duveen, Mademoiselle Bella Duveen

Bella is the girl Jack loves in defiance of his father, a stage performer whose name is faintly familiar to a witness and whose whereabouts Poirot must cross the Channel to discover. When the crime is pinned on Jack, she rushes forward to confess to a murder she did not commit, willing to face the guillotine rather than lose him. Her fierce, self-sacrificing love complicates the case and exposes the emotional wreckage beneath its cold logic.

M. Giraud

supporting

Also known as Giraud, the great Giraud, M. Giraud of the Sûreté

Giraud arrives from Paris already certain of everything, and his method is the opposite of Poirot's: tramp the ground, measure the footprints, sneer at psychology. His open contempt for the Belgian — tapping his head and murmuring 'Toqué!' — goads Poirot into a wager that turns the investigation into a duel. He matters because his confidence forces Poirot to prove that order and method beat swagger, and because his certainty about Jack Renauld is exactly the kind of certainty Christie likes to punish.

M. Hautet

supporting

Also known as Hautet, M. le juge

As Juge d'Instruction, Hautet controls the legal machinery of the investigation — summoning witnesses, weighing evidence, deciding what the law will believe. He is gracious to Poirot and welcomes his help, yet his confidence that the truth is 'not far off' reveals a magistrate who trusts surfaces. His willingness to let two rival detectives work the same case keeps the inquiry open, and his interrogations become the stage on which the village's secrets are forced into speech.

Marthe Daubreuil

supporting

Also known as Mademoiselle Daubreuil, Marthe, Mademoiselle Marthe

Marthe Daubreuil is the girl Jack Renauld loves — or thinks he loves — and the daughter of the woman living quietly at the Villa Marguerite next door. Poirot counts four separate points against her, from an overheard conversation to a missing souvenir dagger, yet she moves through the case with the poise of someone who has nothing to fear. She matters because she sits at the exact intersection of the Renauld fortune, the old Beroldy scandal, and Jack's tangled romances.

Madame Daubreuil

supporting

Also known as Daubreuil, the mysterious Madame Daubreuil

Madame Daubreuil keeps her distance, raises her daughter, and lets the village wonder about her past. Poirot calls her a magnificent actress whose whole life has been cold-blooded and calculating — a woman who connived at one husband's murder for gain and would never kill without profit. She matters because the Beroldy case is the buried root of the Renauld case, and because Poirot's certainty that she is not the murderer here is one of the deductions that leads him, slowly, to the truth.

Gabriel Stonor

supporting

Also known as M. Stonor, Stonor, Mr. Stonor, X Gabriel Stonor

Stonor is the practical Englishman in a French drama — he knows the Renaulds' business, he knows the lad, and he refuses to believe Jack is a murderer even when Jack behaves like one. His loyalty is complicated by his deference to Mrs. Renauld: he'll take his cue from her, he says, and hush up whatever she wants hushed. He matters because his guarded hints about 'a lot more in this affair than meets the eye' tell Poirot — and the reader — that the family is hiding something, and because his steady support of Jack keeps the boy from being entirely alone.

M. Bex

supporting

Also known as M. Lucien Bex, Bex

M. Bex is the village's ranking policeman, the one who first walks Poirot through the scene and the servants' testimony, and who later recounts the Beroldy trial from memory with all its courtroom drama intact. He is methodical, a little provincial, and entirely without Giraud's vanity — a useful pair of hands for the magistrate. He matters because he is the conduit through which the case's strangest details reach Poirot, and because his account of the earlier Beroldy acquittal plants the seed of the solution in the reader's mind.

Georges Conneau

supporting

Also known as young Conneau, Conneau

Conneau was the lover of Madame Beroldy, and on the night her husband died she awoke to find him standing over her with a bloodstained knife. He escaped the guillotine by vanishing, then resurfaced only as a threatening letter when she refused to have anything more to do with him. His shadowy survival links the old Paris murder to the Renauld case, giving Poirot a pattern where Hastings sees a verdict.

Françoise Arrichet

minor

Also known as old Françoise, Françoise

The elderly housekeeper at the Renauld villa.

Auguste

minor

The gardener at Villa Geneviève.

Dr. Durand

minor

The doctor who examines the body and the crime scene.

Inspector Japp

minor

Also known as the good Japp

A Scotland Yard inspector who appears briefly in the investigation.

Dulcie Duveen

minor

Also known as Dulcie, Mademoiselle Dulcie

Bella Duveen's sister, also an actress.

Cinderella

minor

Also known as Mademoiselle Cinderella, Miss Cinderella

A stage name used by one of the Duveen sisters in a theatrical troupe.

Léonie Oulard

minor

Also known as Léonie, the maid Léonie

A young maid at the Renauld household who provides key testimony.

Denise

minor

Another maid at the Renauld villa.

Marchaud

minor

Also known as de ville Marchaud

A police officer assisting Giraud.

Maître Grosier

minor

Also known as the wretched Grosier

A lawyer involved in the Beroldy case.

Mr. Aarons

minor

A man who provides information about a mysterious stranger.

Mr. Hiram P. Trapp

minor

Also known as Mr. Trapp

An American tourist who encountered the victim before the murder.

The Dulcibella Kids

minor

A performing duo mentioned in connection with the Duveen sisters.

Jeanne Beroldy

minor

The wife in the infamous Beroldy murder case.

Arnold Beroldy

minor

Also known as Monsieur Arnold Beroldy, Monsieur Beroldy

The murdered husband in the Beroldy case.

Santiago

minor

A South American location mentioned in connection with the victim's past.