So Heavy Falls the Rain

Dramatis Personae

Loïc Alouarn: A Blackrobe.

Molly Black: Quite a mysterious young lady. I’m sure I don’t know anything about her.

Rosamunde Black: Molly’s mother, an alleged witch.

Jane Brody: Devoted mother, and Sheriff Meeps’s long-suffering housekeeper.

Chloe: The housekeeper at Rycroft Manor.

Owen Coffin: A drunkard and a nuisance.

Ham Dinkle: A dashing, ambitious, determined young detective. Prone to taking copious notes, as well as copious amounts of beer, cheese, and bread wherever he can find it.

Dan Drappeleye: Proprietor of a popular fancy-house. A thoroughly slimy fellow.

Alfonse Frogg: Perhaps he is French. Perhaps he is simply pretentious. Nobody seems to know much about him, although everybody agrees that he is a detestable little man.

Jemima Frost: A ghost. Formerly a whore.

Abigail Hawthorne: The clergyman’s wife. A sour-faced, broad-hipped woman. Devoted to her son.

Ben Hawthorne: A handsome young Captain, currently invalided by a fall from his horse. The apple of his mother’s eye.

Julian Hawthorne: The clergyman. Talks too much in the pulpit, but has an excellent, silvery singing voice. Keeps perhaps one or two secrets as close to him as his white collar.

Dr. Stilton Joffe: An experienced apothecary. A clever man afflicted with the company of fools.

Goody Klump: Town busybody. The oracle of the gossip mill.

Martha Klump: Goody’s granddaughter, and Blythe’s best friend. Quite a lovely young woman. Ask Constable Dinkle about her, and watch him blush.

Lady Lucy: A very clever and talented young lady.

Buck Martin: Annabelle’s handsome young lover. A Huron.

Josiah Meeps: The elderly, shrewd, gout-afflicted Sheriff.

Roger Parrish: The night watchman. A sensible, unimaginative man.

Gertrude Pratchett, née Rycroft: The eldest of the Rycroft girls. Has a taste for expensive teacups, and a knack for the orchestration of nasty, secretive deeds.

Herbert Pratchett: Gertrude’s husband. Newspaperman. Very good at telling stories. Deplorable at love-making.

Annabelle (Frost) Rycroft: The orphaned daughter of Jemima Frost, adopted by Morfran Rycroft at an early age. One-eyed, wild-spirited, and quite distressingly pregnant. (She is, of course, unwed.)

Blythe Rycroft: The middle daughter of Morfran Rycroft. A very pretty redhead, with a very fanciful imagination.

Morfran Rycroft: Magistrate, merchant, and family man.

Solomon: Razor-sharp ears, furtive eyes, and a loose tongue. A servant, of course.

Maribel Staunton: Not a character that you should commit to memory. But she comes back at the end of this story, and so I thought I ought to include her here.

Winston: Another servant. Solomon’s apprentice in rumour-mongering.