The Secret of Chimneys

Anthony Cade

Anthony Cade charms his way through life with easy humor and a talent for cajoling irritable travelers, but his friend Jimmy McGrath knows the truth: trouble finds him wherever he goes. Broke and restless, he takes on a mysterious errand that promises easy money and delivers him straight into a conspiracy of memoirs, murder, and Balkan politics. His charm is his armor, but it's his nose for a row that makes him the story's engine.

Virginia Revel

Virginia Revel moves through diplomatic circles with a reputation for discretion that is, by her own amused admission, entirely undeserved. Having lived in Herzoslovakia just before the assassination of its king and queen, she is more entangled in the Chimneys affair than anyone initially realizes. When the men in charge try to keep her out of the conference, she coolly insists on being included — and her knowledge proves as dangerous as it is valuable.

Superintendent Battle

Superintendent Battle arrives at Chimneys to find a locked room, a dead man, and a household full of secrets that powerful men would prefer stayed buried. He is patient, methodical, and unbothered by the pressure from Whitehall to hush things up — he has seen this kind of thing before and knows it always comes out eventually. His willingness to share the truth with the people involved, against his superiors' wishes, sets the story's central revelations in motion.

Lord Caterham

Lord Caterham is a small, shabbily dressed, melancholy man who finds politics tedious and politicians worse. His brother made Chimneys a stage for history; he would prefer to let it be a private country house and slip abroad unnoticed. When George Lomax bulldozes him into hosting a delicate diplomatic weekend, Caterham's weary resignation becomes the backdrop against which murder and intrigue unfold.

George Lomax

George Lomax is a robust man with protuberant eyes and an immense sense of his own importance, the kind of official who grips a lapel and lectures for twenty minutes without pause. He orchestrates the Herzoslovakian oil negotiations at Chimneys, convinced that secrecy and imperial necessity justify everything. When a corpse turns up, his instinct is to hush it up — a decision that puts him at odds with Superintendent Battle and makes him a target of suspicion himself.

Bill Eversleigh

Bill Eversleigh is the kind of affable young man who knows everyone and is trusted by most, serving as George Lomax's secretary while privately finding his employer as tiresome as everyone else does. He is drawn into the Chimneys affair not by ambition but by friendship and a taste for excitement, and his willingness to help Anthony Cade navigate the tangled social world of the house party proves quietly invaluable. He represents the lighter side of a story that grows steadily darker.