Minor Characters
Emily Greenleaf
Dickie’s mother, whom Tom describes as “formal yet with [a] naïve goodwill-toward-all.” Emily has fallen ill with leukemia, and for that reason she and her husband are desperate to bring Dickie home to share in her final months.
Fausto
Fausto is Dickie and Tom’s Italian tutor. He is a vivacious young Italian man and a “card-carrying Communist” who is native to Milan but a frequent visitor to Mongibello.
Marcellus “Marc” Priminger
Tom’s former housemate, a wealthy man who has a “hobby” of bringing young men in need of financial assistance into his home and putting them up.
Bob Delancey
Tom’s roommate in New York at the novel’s beginning. Not quite a friend, Bob doesn’t know much detail of Tom’s life.
Anna and Ugo
Tom’s servants in Venice.
Ermelinda
Dickie’s maid and cook in Mongibello.
Tenente Roverini
A lieutenant with the Roman police who questions Tom as to Dickie’s whereabouts in the wake of Freddie Miles’s murder (at the hands of Tom-as-Dickie.)
Signora Buffi
The landlady who rents Tom-as-Dickie his apartment in Rome.
Alvin McCarron
An American detective whom Herbert Greenleaf brings over to Italy in order to conduct an investigation of Dickie’s disappearance.
Contessa Roberta “Titi” della Latta-Cacciaguerra
A countess and an acquaintance of Tom’s in Venice.