The Vanishing Stair characters

Appears from the start

A sixteen-year-old from Pittsburgh, obsessed with unsolved crime, who was removed from Ellingham Academy by her parents after a student died there. She is back at her old public school, cut off from her friends and from the 1936 Ellingham case she went to Vermont to solve, and she carries a good deal of guilt about how the autumn ended. She lives with an anxiety disorder and panic attacks she manages with medication.

Appears from the start

Stevie's closest friend at Ellingham, an engineering student who builds machines and keeps her life and her work in careful order. Steady and warm, she is the person who tells Stevie the truth when Stevie will not tell it to herself.

Appears from the start

A teenage novelist at Ellingham who published one long fantasy book and cannot write the sequel he owes. Dry, reluctant and allergic to enthusiasm, he is nonetheless reliably on Stevie's side.

Appears from the start

The Ellingham student Stevie was drawn to and fought with in equal measure, revealed at the end of the autumn to be the son of Senator Edward King. Wealthy, evasive and deliberately difficult, he is estranged from his father and refuses to discuss him.

First appears in chapter 2

A United States senator running for president, a hard, effective political operator whose staff includes Stevie's parents. He is also David's father, a fact David has spent years hiding, and he is used to getting what he wants from people who have very little leverage against him.

Also known as Pix

Appears from the start

The archaeologist who runs Minerva House at Ellingham, practical and unflappable, holding the house together after a death and a disappearance in the autumn term.

Appears from the start

The head of Ellingham Academy, informal and eager to be liked, who is now trying to keep the school open, the parents calm and the press away after the events of the autumn.

Also known as Larry

Appears from the start

The former head of security at Ellingham, a retired police detective who lost his job over what happened in the autumn. Blunt and methodical, he keeps a wary, protective interest in Stevie.

Appears from the start

The Ellingham student who runs the campus news feed, filming and publishing everything she can get. She is well informed, well connected and unsentimental about how she gets her material.

Also known as Ellie

Appears from the start

The Minerva House artist who wrote the online serial Hayes Major took credit for, and who ran into the passages beneath the campus when Stevie named her. She has not been seen since; the search for her has gone cold and the school has settled into treating her as a fugitive.

First appears in chapter 8

A writer living in Burlington who published a book about the Ellingham case years ago and has never let go of it. Sharp, chaotic and drinking heavily, she takes Stevie on as a research assistant and is convinced she is close to finding out what became of Alice Ellingham.

First appears in chapter 8

Dr. Fenton's nephew, a college student living in her house in Burlington and doing much of the practical work of keeping it running. Patient and easy company, he helps Stevie work through his aunt's disordered research.

Appears from the start

The tycoon who built Ellingham Academy in the 1930s and filled it with riddles, hidden mechanisms and games. After his wife and daughter were taken in April 1936 he spent the rest of his life searching, and his will left his fortune to whoever found Alice.

Appears from the start

The Ellinghams' small daughter, taken in April 1936 and never found. Eighty years of hoaxers, claimants and searchers have followed the fortune promised to whoever produces her.

Appears from the start

The lawman closest to the Ellingham family, who had once saved Albert Ellingham's life and was trusted with the family's safety and with the ransom negotiation after the kidnapping.

Appears from the start

Iris Ellingham's closest friend and a long-staying guest at the estate, whose life was bound up with the family's and who was in the house when Iris and Alice were taken.

Also known as Leo

Appears from the start

The painter and long-standing friend of the Ellinghams, a detached observer of the household who saw more of its private life than anyone outside it.

Appears from the start

Albert Ellingham's private secretary, precise and endlessly capable, who managed the estate's affairs through the kidnapping and the years of searching that followed.

First appears in chapter 10

An Ellingham student in 1936, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturing family, clever and restless and unimpressed by the future arranged for her. She was at the school when Iris and Alice Ellingham were taken.

First appears in chapter 10

An Ellingham student in 1936, Francis Crane's closest companion at the school, sharing her fascination with the celebrity criminals then filling the newspapers.