Shot With Crimson - 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 he 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. 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.

- Superintendent Alexander Bell is Archie's boss.

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

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

-  Lettie Motley is Archie’s cousin, and she and her sister are famous seamstresses.

-  Ronnie Motley is Archie’s cousin, and she and her sister are famous seamstresses. In the book she is in New York.

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

- 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.

- 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

- 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:

- Daphne du Maurier, the writer of Rebecca, is a character in the novel. She went to Milton Hall when she was ten, which inspired her to describe Menderley. She came across James, who sent her to give a model of the folly to Matthew, but she was confronted by Marion, and she got frightened. 

- Alma Reville is Hitchcock's wife and she and Josephine travel together on the HMS Mary. 

- Alfred Hitchcock is a character in the novel and directs the film Rebecca.

- David Selznick is the producer in Rebecca.

- Lucy Reville is Alma's mother.

- Patricial Hitchcock is Alma and Hitchcock's wife. She goes missing because Lee Hessel wanted to give the Hitchcocks a fright in revenge because she believed her father died because of Hitchcock. 

- Lee Hessel is a woman who has a grudge on Hitchcok because she believes that her father, who was an actor, died because the conditions in Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn made him sick. Lee Hessel tells Josephine that she wants the Hitchcocks to suffer, and then in California she takes Patricia under false pretences, but she return her because James persuades her.

- James Bartholomew works for Hitchcock building miniatures. In 1917 James was an orderly and he fell in love with Matthew, a man who he looked for. Yet, his mother caught them and kept them apart. When James is in Milton Hall to explore the interiors for the film, she goes to see Marion, and when she hints that she urged Matthew to kill himself, James smothers her with a cushion. However, Marion didn't die but got very sick. James confesses what he has done to Josephine, and through Archie she learns that Marion is dying but is alive. James promises Josephine to go to the police but he then flees. At the end of the book he kills himself by walking in the flames that Hitchcock was using for the burning scene in the film.

- Frank Wheeler is the cameraman who worked alongside James. James didn't like him as he was a braggart. Frank was cooperating with Lee to hurt the Hitchcocks.

- Victor Petrie is the second unit's director. Victor tries to blackmail James.

- Marion Plummer used to be the housekeeper in the house in the old days, and when she discovered Matthew and James together, she kept them apart. Marion dies days later after James presses a cushion on her face when she hinted that she encouraged her son to kill himself.

- Matthew Plummer was the young soldier that James was in love with. Matthew committed suicide, which devastated Matthew. In a letter that James got from Matthew's sister, Evelyn, she told him that her brother was not the courageous soldier that he believed, and James remembered that Matthew was actually manipulative. At the end of the book we discover that Matthew was a killer as he murdered his best friend, Robert, when he refused to leave to enlist to fight the war.

- Evelyn Young was Matthew's sister. She took over her mother and is the housekeeper. In the book she is found dead, and Archie investigates her death. He discovers that Evelyn was killed by Georgia Wells, the vicar's wife, when she discovered that Matthew killed her son and Evelyn and her mother concealed the murder.

- William Melrose was Lee's father. He was an actor who had a weak chest, and he got sick after the conditions of Jamaica Inn when he had to be in cold water many hours.

- Lydia Schiller is the script editor who is Selznick's eyes and ears on set. 

- Colonel Selwyn Scott used to know Archie as they went to university together. He is stationed at Milton Hall and when Evelyn is found dead, he requests Archie investigate the murder.

- DI Hughes is the local constable.

- Georgia WElls is the vicar's wife. She kills Evelyn when she discovers that Matthew killed her son and Evelyn knew about it. It happened when she found Marion unconscious and called the ambulance to take her to the hospital. She thought of packing some clothes for Evelyn, but then she found her son's suitcase under her bed. 

- Donald Young is Evelyn's husband. He met Evelyn when he was convalescing in Milton Hall during the First World War and Evelyn was a nurse. When Evelyn fails to return home the first day, Donald invents that she is away, looking after an aunt, because she thought that Evelyn had eloped with James as she was in love with him. 

- Robert Wells was Matthew's friend and the vicar's son. Matthew made everyone believe that he had gone to the war with him, but the reality is that he had killed him when Robert had decided against going with him. Then Matthew wrote a letter, saying that Robert had died, and in the letter he told Georgia that he had tried to desert and had been killed. That way Georgia did not try to contact the army.

- Michael Wells is the vicar. 

- George Devine is Lettie's fiancé. He directs Rebecca for stage. He is a real person.