Characters in The Mystery of the Spanish Chest

Supporting characters

• Hercule Poirot

  Distrusts the obvious arrest and fastens on a single illogical detail nobody else questions

  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, Assassinato no Expresso do Oriente

• Miss Lemon

  Her practical research and clerical precision feed Poirot the groundwork he reasons from

  Also in The Labours of Hercules, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

• Major Charles Rich

  The circumstances make him the inevitable suspect, yet his calm conduct strikes Poirot as wrong for a guilty man

• Arnold Clayton

  Believed to have left for Scotland by train the night he died

• Margharita Clayton

  Her attractiveness to the men around her shapes every theory of motive

• The Spences

  Their account of the evening helps fix who was where as the gathering broke up