Whose Body? characters

Appears from the start

An aristocratic amateur detective whose light manner conceals a disciplined interest in evidence. When a stranger is found dead in an architect's bath, he takes up the puzzle for its own sake and soon connects it with a second, apparently unrelated disappearance.

Appears from the start

Wimsey's capable valet and former wartime sergeant. He manages practical details, photography, and inquiries with discretion, while also watching for signs that the investigation is placing too much strain on his employer.

Appears from the start

A Scotland Yard detective and Wimsey's friend. Methodical and less theatrical than the amateur sleuth, he is investigating the disappearance of the financier Sir Reuben Levy when the body-in-the-bath case begins.

Appears from the start

A respectable architect who discovers an unknown naked man in the bath of his London flat. His bewilderment and lack of any plausible connection to the dead man make him both a suspect to the police and an object of Wimsey's concern.

Appears from the start

Thipps's elderly mother, who shares his flat. Her diffuse account of the night contains observations that become more useful once Wimsey separates what she noticed from how she interpreted it.

Appears from the start

The police inspector initially responsible for the corpse in Thipps's bath. Certain that the obvious household suspects must be involved, he represents an official line of inquiry that Wimsey considers too narrow.

Appears from the start

A wealthy Jewish financier who vanishes from his home on the same night that the unidentified body appears. The corpse resembles him in broad physical terms, but important details challenge the convenient assumption that the two cases are identical.

First appears in chapter 2

Sir Reuben's wife. She gives Parker a careful account of her husband's last evening and insists that the dead man in the bath is not him, despite the resemblance on which the first public theories depend.

First appears in chapter 4

A distinguished specialist in diseases of the nervous system whose hospital and home stand near the scene of the bath mystery. His medical authority and familiarity with bodies make his evidence especially important to Wimsey.

First appears in chapter 5

Wimsey's formidable mother, socially observant and far less conventional than her title suggests. She supplies family intelligence, affectionate advice, and useful access without treating her son's detecting as a mere eccentricity.