# The Pit-Prop Syndicate — Character guide

> Key figures in The Pit-Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts.

- [Merriman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/merriman.md): A stranded English cyclist whose chance glimpse of a repainted lorry number turns an idle roadside stop into a private war on a secretive French sawmill.
- [Inspector Willis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/willis.md): A Scotland Yard inspector who inherits a tangle of amateur sleuthing and a fresh corpse, and must decide how much of Merriman's wild story to believe.
- [Claud Hilliard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/hilliard.md): A Customs Department man whose official instincts sharpen his friend's vague suspicions into a working theory of smuggling, fraud, and a pit-prop trade that is anything but innocent.
- [Madeleine Coburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/madeleine_coburn.md): The sawmill manager's daughter, caught between a suitor she cannot accept and a father whose business she cannot quite defend.
- [Mr. Coburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/coburn.md): The Bordeaux sawmill manager whose quiet competence masks a man looking forward to a cottage retirement he may never reach.
- [Archibald Charles Archer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/archer.md): A syndicate insider whose suggestion of a Swansea depot and appetite for a comfortable profit mark him as one of the sharper, more calculating conspirators.
- [Stopford Hunt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/stopford_hunt.md): Hunt drives the dirty-green lorry marked 'The Landes Pit-Prop Syndicate, No. 4,' the vehicle Merriman chases into the forest when his own petrol runs dry. His incongruous poise — a gentleman's posture under a workman's c
- [Captain Beamish](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/beamish.md): Beamish commands the syndicate's ship and, by Inspector Willis's reckoning, matches the physical profile of the suspected killer — tall, round-shouldered, thin-lipped, with a jaw like a closing door. He is the case's mos
- [Benson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/benson.md): A man connected to the syndicate, possibly a spy or informant.
- [Mr. Bulla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/bulla.md): A manager at the Ferriby depot of the syndicate.
- [M. Jules Laroche](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/laroche.md): A French police official who cooperates with Inspector Willis.
- [Henri](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/henri.md): A French employee at the syndicate's sawmill.
- [M. Pierre Raymond](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/pierre_raymond.md): A French businessman connected to the syndicate.
- [Ferriby Manager](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pit_prop_syndicate_se/characters/ferriby_manager.md): The manager of the syndicate's depot at Ferriby.

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