Characters in The Moving Finger

Supporting characters

• Jerry Burton

  An outsider whose detached, recovering perspective lets him observe the town's tensions while becoming personally entangled in its lives.

• Joanna Burton

  Stylish and city-bred, she adapts to country life and forms her own attachments among the locals.

• Megan Hunter

  Overlooked and unhappy at home, she is sharper and more perceptive than those around her assume.

• Richard Symmington

  A composed, respectable professional at the centre of the town's establishment.

• Mrs Mona Symmington

  Her faded, delicate manner masks a more self-absorbed nature, and she becomes a focal point of the poison-pen campaign.

• Dr Owen Griffith

  Earnest and somewhat reserved, he is drawn into both the medical and emotional fallout of the letters.

• Aimee Griffith

  Capable and domineering, she throws herself into village affairs with an assurance that can unsettle others.

• Elsie Holland

  Strikingly pretty and conventionally pleasant, she draws attention within the household.

• Mrs Dane Calthrop

  Disconcertingly direct and unfooled by appearances, she recognises real evil for what it is.

• Miss Jane Marple

  Appearing only in the closing stretch, she applies her quiet understanding of human nature to untangle the case.

  Also in The Murder at the Vicarage, The Thirteen Problems, The Body in the Library, A Murder Is Announced, They Do It with Mirrors, A Pocket Full of Rye, 4:50 from Paddington, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, A Caribbean Mystery, At Bertram's Hotel