# The Murder on the Links — Character guide

> Key figures in The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie.

- [Hercule Poirot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/hercule_poirot.md): 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 hi
- [Captain Hastings](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/captain_hastings.md): 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 d
- [Paul Renauld](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/paul_renauld.md): 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, th
- [Jack Renauld](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/jack_renauld.md): 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 co
- [Mrs. Renauld](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/mrs_renauld.md): 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 an
- [Bella Duveen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/bella_duveen.md): 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
- [M. Giraud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/m_giraud.md): 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
- [M. Hautet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/m_hautet.md): 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 confid
- [Marthe Daubreuil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/mademoiselle_daubreuil.md): 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 con
- [Madame Daubreuil](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/madame_daubreuil.md): 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 a
- [Gabriel Stonor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/gabriel_stonor.md): 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 de
- [M. Bex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/m_bex.md): 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 met
- [Georges Conneau](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/georges_conneau.md): 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 
- [Françoise Arrichet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/francoise_arrichet.md): The elderly housekeeper at the Renauld villa.
- [Auguste](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/auguste.md): The gardener at Villa Geneviève.
- [Dr. Durand](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/dr_durand.md): The doctor who examines the body and the crime scene.
- [Inspector Japp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/japp.md): A Scotland Yard inspector who appears briefly in the investigation.
- [Dulcie Duveen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/dulcie_duveen.md): Bella Duveen's sister, also an actress.
- [Cinderella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters/cinderella.md): A stage name used by one of the Duveen sisters in a theatrical troupe.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_murder_on_the_links_se/characters