Characters in Dumb Witness

Hercule Poirot

The Belgian detective whose methodical reasoning takes up a case opened by a letter that arrives too late to save the writer.

Also in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Big Four, Mystery of the Blue Train, Black Coffee, Peril at End House, Lord Edgware Dies, Murder on the Orient Express

Captain Arthur Hastings

Poirot's loyal companion and the novel's narrator, genial and easily misled, voicing the reader's wrong guesses.

Also in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Murder on the Links, Poirot Investigates, The Big Four, Black Coffee, Peril at End House, Lord Edgware Dies, Curtain

Emily Arundell

A wealthy, strong-willed elderly spinster who suspects a member of her own family wants her dead and writes to Poirot before she dies.

Bob

Emily Arundell's wire-haired terrier, whose ball is blamed for her fall; the silent creature of the title.

Theresa Arundell

Emily's spirited, fashionable niece who stands to inherit and lives well beyond her means.

Charles Arundell

Emily's charming, feckless nephew, perpetually short of money and quick to ask his aunt for more.

Bella Tanios

Emily's dowdy, anxious niece, married to a foreign doctor and dependent on him.

Dr Jacob Tanios

Bella's Greek-born husband, an outsider regarded with suspicion by the family and by xenophobic neighbours.

Wilhelmina Lawson

Emily's timid paid companion, known as Minnie, whose role in the household and the will draws close scrutiny.

The Tripp Sisters

Isabel and Julia, two eccentric spinster spiritualists whose seances and automatic writing feed gossip about Emily's death.