Dear Little Corpses - Characters

 SPOILERS!!!

These are the characters that appear in this book:

REGULAR CHARACTERS

- Josephine Tey (43) is the main character. She is based on a real person, a writer and playwright. Josephine comes from Aberdeen, where she lives and looks after her invalid father. In the books we see her relationship with two characters progress. One is with Archie, the inspector, who is her best friend, and at the beginning of the series I had the impression that they would become a couple, but they are just the best of friends. The other one is Marta, who she meets through another friend, Lydia. Marta was Lydia’s lover back then, but then she and Josephine fell in love, and now they are in a stable relationship.

- Chief Inspector Archie Penrose (45) is Josephine’s friend, and he is in charge of the investigation of most of the cases in the books. In one of the books Archie got reacquainted with Bridget, a woman she was in love with before leaving for the war, and they had a relationship. Bridget was killed and he discovered that she had lied to him for years. Bridget had a daughter, Archie’s daughter, who she never told him about, and when he learned the truth. Now Archie is getting to know his daughter, and Phillys is happy to have him as her father. Archie is now in a relatioship with Virginia Moorcroft.

- Marta Fox is Josephine’s lover, but for a while she was also the lover of an actress, Lydia. We first met her in the first book and we got to know about her story. She was married to Elliott Vintner, who had sued Josephine for plagiarism, and they had a child. During the war Marta had an affair with Arthur, who was in Elliot’s regiment. Marta got pregnant, and Elliott had Arthur killed, and then he sold the baby to one of his men who helped him kill Arthur, and he sent Marta to an asylum. The baby who was taken from Marta was Elspeth, who was the first victim in this series of books, and her murderer was Marta’s other child, Rafe Vintner. Now Marta is in a stable relationship with Josephine and she has bought a house in Cambridge where they spend their time together. Marta works as a scriptwriter for Alfred Hitchcock.

- Virginia Moorcroft is the woman Archie is in a relationship with. Archie met her in a previous. Back then Virginia was married, but her husband murdered someone, and he was found out. 

- Hilary Lampton is the vicar's wife in the village. She and Josephine are good friends, and during the investigagion she has to confess something. Her son is not her husband's child. Stephen and Hilary met when he was working in a home for unwed mothers, and Hilary was there. They fell in love and Stephen wanted to marry her and be a father to her child. That is the reason why they had to move to the country

- Stephen Lampton is the vicar and Hilary's husband. 

- Evie Moorcroft is Virginia's daughter.

- Teddy Moorcroft is Virginia's son.

-Phyllis is Archie and Bridget’s daughter. She is twenty-one and works in the design of props in a theatre in Cambridge.

- Detective Sergeant Bill Fallowfield is Archie’s colleague.

- Ronney and Lettie Motley are Archie’s cousins, and they are seamstresses and in charge of the wardrobe in Josephine’s plays. They don't appear in all the novels. 

- Bridget was Archie’s lost love. They re-met in Cornwall and their love rekindled. Bridget had a secret. When she and Archie broke up years ago, she was pregnant and had a daughter. Bridget never told Archie or her daughter the truth and then she died

- Lydia Beaumont is an actress and a friend of Josephine’s. Lydia was Marta’s acknowledged lover.

- Moire is one of Josephine’s sisters.

- Donald is Moire’s husband

- Dora Snipe, called the Snipe, is Ronney and Lettie’s housekeeper.

- Bernard Spilsbury is the pathologist who works with Archie in the investigation of crimes.

- Percy Savage is Archie’s superintendent.

- Jack Mackenzie is the man Josephine was engaged to but he died in the war. Josephine met him in the convalescing camp close to Charleston House.

CHARACTERS IN THIS NOVEL:

- Annie Ridley (5) is the little girl who is thought to have been kidnapped. What actually happened is that Annie found Angie's label and since she was angry with her mother for taking in evacuees, she wanted to punish her. Annie ended up at the home of a woman in a nearby village, and Josephine discovered the mishap.

- Elsie Gladding owns the shop in the village and is Annie's grandmother. 

- Kathleen Ridley is Elsie's daughter and Annie's mother. She and her husband work a farm.

- Edmund Herron (Ned) lives in a big house in the village, and he is barely seen by the neighbours. At the end of the book Edmund confesses that when he was twele, he kidnapped a baby from the gypsy campt. His intention was to make his mother happy as she has been very low because of a baby she had lost. Ned accidentally killed the baby when he left her in a box. Yet, it seems that the killer may have been Winnie because she knew about it and kept blackmailing Ned.

- Lillian Herron (59) is Ned's sister. She was married, but when her husband died in the Great War, she returned to live with her siblings. Lillian is very protective of Ned.

- Florence Herron is the youngest Herron.

- Maggie Lucas (25) is one of the mothers who sends her child to the country to protect her. Maggie loses her daughter when Cyril kills her. At the end of the book Maggie refuses to find shelter from the bombs because she wants to die and get reunited with Angie.

- Angela Lucas (Angie) (4) is the little girl whose mother sends to the country  and is killed

- Bob Lucas is Maggie's husband. He has joined up. 

- Noah Stebbing is the boy who Josephine and Betty look after temporarily. Noah seems to have problems and Josephine and Martha discover that his mother lives in the building where the rent collector whose death Archie is investigating was found. Josephine thinks that Noah killed teh rent collector when he tried to attack his mother.

- Betty Stebbing is Noah's sister. She is taken in by the Herrons but they refuse to have Noah as well, and that is why Noah has to go to Josephine's. At the end of the book Betty and Noah go with Margery.

- Maureen Stebbing is Noah and Betty's mother. 

- Winnie Chilver used to be a servant at the Herrons' and she has been blackmailing them because she claimed she knew that Ned killed a baby. It seems that the person who killed the baby was herself. At the end of the book Winnie is killed by her brother.

- Cyril Chilver used to be a gardener for the Herrons and now he devotes his time to grow flowers. Cyril is a child killer, and the police find lots of baby corpses in the Herron's garden where he used to work. He kidnapped Angie and her friend Lizzie, and he killed them. 

- Henry Maitland works in the jam factory and has a difficult relationship with his wife. He had an affair with his driver's wife, and they planned to leave, but when the woman's child was hurt under her care, she left him and asked her husband for forgiveness.

- Cissy Maitland is Henry's daughter.

- Dorothy Matiland is Henry's wife.

- Ron Davis is the bus driver who takes the evacuees to the village. Davis also works for Henry Maitland, and there is bad blood between them because Henry had an affair with Davis's wife, and they intended to elope. But then Davis's child got hurt, and she stayed with Ron, and he forgave her. 

- Joan Davis is Ron's wife. 

- Charlie Davis is Ron's disabled son. 

- Margery Allingham comes to the fete to be part of the jury alongside Josephine. She is in charge of the selection and distribution of evacuees in her village.

- Philip Alligham is Margery's brother.