Character guide

Brian Fitzgerald

major

Also known as Mr. Brian Fitzgerald, Mr. Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald, the Prisoner Brian Fitzgerald, young Fitzgerald

Brian moves easily through Collins Street clubs and Frettlby drawing-rooms, courting Madge and dodging questions about Whyte with a haste that reads as guilt. His evasiveness — snapping at the very mention of the murder, biting back a retort about Whyte marrying Madge — makes him the puzzle the whole city wants solved. He anchors the trial arc: a gentleman whose silence may hang him.

Duncan Calton

major

Also known as Mr. Calton, Calton, Justice Calton

Calton argues with detectives over pints and possibilities, puncturing loose accusations against Moreland and demanding evidence rather than conjecture. His legal mind is the counterweight to gossip: where the public sees a guilty lover, he sees gaps, contradictions, and a coat up a fir-tree that explains nothing yet. He matters because Brian's fate rests on whether Calton can out-think the case the city has already decided.

Madge Frettlby

major

Also known as Miss Frettlby, Madge, Frettlby, Miss Madge Frettlby, Gretchen

Madge is Melbourne's golden girl — charming, teasing, adored by Brian, and utterly at home in the city's social round of ribbons, carriages, and afternoon tea. Her lightness is genuine, but it brushes against the murder when she idly wonders who the gentleman in the light coat could have been, not knowing how close the question cuts. She is the emotional stake of the early arc: the love Brian stands to keep or lose, and the daughter whose happiness her father guards with secrets.

Oliver Whyte

major

Also known as Mr. Oliver Whyte, Whyte, Mr. Whyte, the late Mr. Whyte

Whyte is remembered by acquaintances like Moreland as erratic, fond of other men's wives, and not quite respectable — yet he moved in circles that included the Frettlbys, and Frettlby once wanted him to marry Madge. His death is the engine of the plot: everyone who knew him becomes a suspect, and everyone who disliked him becomes a liar. He matters less as a man than as the question his corpse poses.

Mark Frettlby

major

Also known as Frettlby, the late Mark Frettlby, poor Mark Frettlby, Mr. Frettlby

Frettlby reads the Age at his club, indulges Madge, and dismisses Whyte as 'not a very desirable companion' — a remark that lands oddly given his own past connection to the dead man. His ease and his evasions sit side by side: he warns Brian off the subject, yet the murder keeps circling back to his family. He is the respectable surface of the story, and the early arc keeps tapping at it to hear what's hollow.

Mr. Gorby

supporting

Also known as Gorby, VI Mr. Gorby, IX Mr. Gorby

Gorby arrives at Mrs. Hableton's lodging house with patient, methodical questions, taking the measure of the insolent Moreland and the tearful landlady without missing a detail. He is the story's first pair of official eyes on the case, gathering the fragments — the coat, the chloroform, the cab — that others will later fight over. He matters because he sets the investigative machinery in motion before the lawyers and the secrets take over.

Mr. Kilsip

supporting

Also known as Kilsip, Meanwhile Kilsip

Kilsip works the hansom cab murder from the police side, pitting his intimate knowledge of Melbourne's low life against the more theatrical methods of his colleague Gorby. Where Gorby blusters and theorizes, Kilsip watches, waits, and remembers faces from the slums that respectable men would rather forget. His patient intelligence matters because the case's solution lies buried in the city's poorest quarters, and only a detective who moves easily between drawing rooms and back alleys can dig it out.

Sal Rawlins

supporting

Also known as Sal, Sarah Rawlins, Rawlins, The woman Rawlins

Sal Rawlins belongs to the world of back lanes and cheap lodging houses, a survivor whose hard life has taught her to read people as quickly as they misjudge her. She carries secrets about the night of the murder that the respectable investigators need and the guilty would kill to suppress, and her loyalty is not easily bought. Her presence pulls the mystery down from St. Kilda drawing rooms into the gutters where the truth actually lives, and her testimony becomes a hinge on which the case turns.

Felix Rolleston

supporting

Also known as Mr. Felix Rolleston, Rolleston, Felix, Mr. Rolleston, the ingenuous Felix

Felix Rolleston is the kind of young man who plays Offenbach galops after dinner, dismisses poetry as mystical nonsense, and considers a song without a moral perfectly satisfactory. He moves easily through Melbourne's drawing rooms, which makes him a useful friend to Brian Fitzgerald and an unwitting carrier of the talk that swirls around the murder. His lightness contrasts sharply with the darkness closing in on his circle, and his social access means he hears things that more serious men miss.

Mrs. Hableton

supporting

Also known as Hableton

Mrs. Hableton keeps a lodging house where the line between genteel respectability and quiet desperation is very thin indeed. She talks freely to the police, but her eagerness to appear helpful masks a keen instinct for self-preservation and a household full of secrets. Her establishment becomes a crucial waypoint in the investigation, because the people who passed through her doors on the night of the murder are precisely the ones the detectives need to find.

Mother Guttersnipe

supporting

Also known as Mother

Mother Guttersnipe presides over the poorest quarter of Melbourne like a malevolent queen, her authority built on fear, favours, and the secrets she hoards about everyone around her. She is the keeper of Sal Rawlins and the gate through which any outsider must pass to reach the slum's hidden knowledge. Her refusal to be intimidated by respectable investigators makes her a formidable obstacle, and the truths buried in her filthy domain are essential to understanding what really happened in the hansom cab.

Roger Moreland

supporting

Also known as Moreland, Mr. Moreland, this Mr. Moreland, All Moreland

Roger Moreland moves on the edges of Melbourne society, a man whose friendship with Oliver Whyte links him directly to the victim and whose uneasy manner invites suspicion. He knows more about Whyte's affairs than he is willing to say, and his reluctance to speak plainly suggests a past he would prefer stayed buried. As the detectives close in on the circumstances surrounding the murder, Moreland's guarded testimony and shadowed history become a thread that threatens to unravel the whole case.

Dr. Chinston

minor

Also known as Chinston, Meanwhile Dr. Chinston

A doctor who provides medical evidence at the trial.

Malcolm Royston

minor

Also known as Royston, The cabman Royston, cabman Royston

The cabman who drove the hansom cab on the night of the murder.

Mrs. Sampson

minor

A housekeeper or servant in the Frettlby household.

Julia Featherweight

minor

Also known as Julia, Presently Julia, Miss Featherweight

A friend or acquaintance of Madge Frettlby.

Clement Rankin

minor

Also known as Rankin, The cabman Rankin

Another cabman involved in the case.

Rosanna Moore

minor

Also known as Rosanna, Moore, God Rosanna Moore

A deceased woman with a connection to Mark Frettlby.

Mr. Valpy

minor

Also known as old Valpy, Mr. Valpy, old Mr. Valpy

An elderly gentleman mentioned in passing.

Peterson

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or constable.

Sebastian Brown

minor

Also known as Brown

A minor character mentioned in the investigation.

Mrs. Rolleston

minor

Also known as pretty Mrs. Rolleston, Mr. and Mrs. Rolleston

Felix Rolleston's mother, a society lady.

Margaret Frettlby

minor

Also known as Margaret

Mark Frettlby's late wife, mentioned in backstory.

Albert Dendy

minor

Also known as Dendy

A minor character involved in the legal proceedings.

Lizer

minor

A woman from the slums, associate of Sal Rawlins.

Musette

minor

A singer or performer mentioned in the story.

Barbara Allen

minor

A name from a ballad, referenced in the narrative.

Mrs. Whyte

minor

Also known as Whyte

Oliver Whyte's mother, mentioned briefly.

Gran

minor

An elderly relative or character in the slums.