Social Register (The People of Blackstone)

Janice Anderson: a sharp businesswoman with a friendly demeanor who runs Blackstone's thriving Antique Shop on the Square.

Ed Becker: Jules Hartwick's lawyer, he was formerly a defense lawyer in Boston. His hobby is restoring antique furniture, and he covets an old dresser that was left in a room of the Asylum.

Bonnie Becker: Ed Becker's wife.

Amy Becker: Bonnie and Ed Becker's five-year-old daughter.

Edna Burnham: an elderly wig-wearing Blackstone resident whom Rebecca Morrison's simple honesty once offended. She is suspicious of the dreadful events taking place in Blackstone, and has been surmising that they are somehow linked to the Asylum's dark history.

Charlie: the Blackstone mailman, who delivers packages that aren't always welcome.

Tom Cleary: one of Bill McGuire's Blackstone Center work crew members, he is behind on his bank payments.

Charity Connally: Wife of Jonas Connally, she is buried in lonely splendor with her husband in the mausoleum he built for his family.

Charles Connally: Son of the imperious Jonas Connally, and grandfather of Oliver Metcalf. Along with his five sisters, he decided in 1927 that he would have no part of the mausoleum Jonas had built for himself, his wife, and his children...but not their spouses or offspring. Enthusiastic and optimistic, Charles built the mansion on North Hill that later became the Asylum.

Eleanor Connally: Wife of Charles Connally.

Harvey Connally: Oliver Metcalf's 83-year-old uncle. His father Charles was the builder of the Blackstone Asylum long ago. His sister Olivia Connally married Oliver's father Malcolm Metcalf.

Jonas Connally: Harvey Connally's grandfather and Oliver Metcalf's great-grandfather, he was the imperious patriarch of a family of six--five daughters and a son, Charles. His control of the family was planned to extend even after his death--he built a mausoleum designed to house the bodies of himself, his wife, his six children, but none of their spouses or offspring.

Nancy Conway: Dr. Margolis's nurse, she is incapable of keeping a secret.

Angela Corelli: the Blackstone Chronicle receptionist and secretary, and a childhood playmate of Andrea Ward.

Mr. Corelli: Angela's father. He ran the junk store and came to collect Fred Ward's furniture after Ward left his wife.

Steve Driver: The deputy sheriff of Blackstone.

Gary Fletcher: The handsome, sexy manager at the restaurant in Boston where Andrea Ward worked as a waitress. They had been living together, and Martha Ward, Andrea's mother, was convinced that Gary was evil. Gary abruptly ended their long love affair when he learned that Andrea was pregnant. To top it off, he confessed that he never divorced his first wife. Andrea returned to Blackstone for support and solace, only to meet a gruesome fate.

Tommy Gardner: the boy who got Martha Ward's older sister Marilyn pregnant, then went off to join the Army during the Korean War.

Ellen Golding: Jules Hartwick's ever-efficient secretary at the First National Bank of Blackstone.

Mrs. Goodrich: the McGuire family housekeeper, still going strong even though she is in her late 80s.

Celeste Hartwick: Jules and Madeleine Hartwick's auburn-haired daughter, who is engaged to Andrew Sterling. The violent events of a few months ago have darkened her life and left her without a father, and with an abiding mystery: what happened?

Jules Hartwick: the good-hearted president of the First National Bank of Blackstone, whose father ran the bank before him. Jules's lenience when it comes to loan payments endangered the credit status of the bank and thus threatened the financing for the Blackstone Center project. After a few days of increasingly strange behavior, Jules attempted to harm his wife Madeleine and eventually committed suicide on the steps of the Asylum. No one knows why.

Madeleine Hartwick: Jules Hartwick's wife, she is a keen matchmaker. But her happy life was shattered when her husband began to act mentally unbalanced and finally almost killed her, then killed himself. After leaving Blackstone for a while with her daughter, Celeste, she has returned to live on Harvard Street again.

The elder Mrs. Hartwick: Jules Hartwick's mother, who volunteered at the Asylum long ago.

Melissa Holloway: Executive Vice President of the First National Bank of Blackstone, and President after Jules Hartwick's untimely death. As a child, she was once confined to a hospital herself, which makes her reaction to the Blackstone Center plans somewhat troubled. However, she knows that the events of her childhood in Secret Cove are not related to Blackstone in any way, and she puts her personal reactions aside when it comes time to rule on the Blackstone Center's financing.

Lucas Iverson: Blackstone's minister.

Lorena (an alias): the mysterious asylum patient who died in a bloody operation years ago. She is somehow connected with the locket.

Dr. Philip Margolis: the McGuire family's sensible doctor. He is also Oliver Metcalf's doctor, and has had him checked out to determine the cause of his strange headaches...to no avail.

Marilyn: Martha Ward's sister, who got pregnant out of wedlock and was sent away to the Asylum when Martha was just a child.

Lois Martin: assistant editor and layout artist for the Blackstone Chronicle for the past 15 years.

Bill McGuire: the contractor in charge of the Blackstone Center project. He lives on Amherst street in a beautiful Victorian house with his daughter, Megan.

Elizabeth McGuire: Bill McGuire's wife. After a tragic miscarriage caused by rescuing her daughter Megan from a mysterious household accident, she apparently committed suicide by jumping out a window of their house onto the flagstones below.

Laurette McGuire: Bill McGuire's aunt who killed herself before he was born.

Megan McGuire: Elizabeth and Bill's six-year-old daughter.

Mallory Metcalf: Twin sister of Oliver, she was born in 1952 and died mysteriously at the age of three. There were all kinds of rumors at the time, but no one living is sure what happened. Most believe it was an accident, but there was talk at the time that Oliver had been to blame, or perhaps Dr. Metcalf.

Oliver Metcalf: the 40ish newspaper editor and publisher of the Blackstone Chronicle. After going away to school, he returned to Blackstone and lives in the cottage on the Asylum grounds where he grew up. He had a sister, Mallory, but she met a mysterious fate long ago that no one in Blackstone talks about. Ever since strange things have been happening in town, Oliver has been having bizarre, intense headaches. Though he's had a medical workup, nothing seems to be wrong.

Olivia Connally Metcalf: Wife of Malcolm and mother of Oliver and Mallory, she died giving birth to them on March 19, 1952. Oliver was named after her; Mallory was named after Malcolm, her father. Born in 1923, she was Harvey Connally's sister and the daughter of Charles and Eleanor Connally.

Malcolm Metcalf: Oliver's father, born in 1914 and dead since 1959, who was the superintendent of the Blackstone Asylum. His wife Olivia was Harvey Connally's sister. He committed suicide on the anniversary of his daughter Mallory's death (which was also his wife's birthday).

Margaret Morrison: Rebecca's mother, who was killed in a car accident when Rebecca was a child.

Mick Morrison: Rebecca's father, who was killed in the same car accident that took his wife's life when Rebecca was a child.

Rebecca Morrison: a young woman who works at the library for Germaine Wagner. Her parents were killed in the car crash that left her a bit simpleminded, but she is sweet and friendly and may know more than people suspect. She is in her late 20s and lived with her aunt, Martha Ward, until recently. Now she lives with Germaine Wagner and her demanding mother Clara.

Jim Nicholson: another of Bill McGuire's Blackstone Center work crew members, he too has fallen behind on his bank loans.

Bob Randall: A ruggedly handsome doctor at a Boston abortion clinic.

Miss Schmidt: Jules Hartwick's father's secretary, who worked for him at the bank until the day she died.

Andrew Sterling: The Chief Loan Officer at the First National Bank of Blackstone, he has asked for Celeste Hartwick's hand in marriage.

Charles VanDeventer and family: The Hartwicks' neighbors; they live across the street.

Monsignor Vernon: Blackstone's Catholic priest, who is a great comfort to Martha Ward.

Clara Wagner: the housebound, wheelchair-confined mother of Germaine, she is demanding, imperious, mysteriously paralyzed from the waist down, and impossible to please. She is addicted to gossip. She worked at the Asylum long ago.

Germaine Wagner: the head librarian at Blackstone's Library for the past twenty years, she is an incurable gossip like her mother, Clara. After Martha Ward's death, she takes in Rebecca Morrison...but not exactly out of simple charity.

Andrea Ward: Martha Ward's daugher, who left home just after she turned eighteen. Until recently she lived with Gary Fletcher somewhere far from Blackstone. But when the two of them broke up, she returned home to her mother's house, where a tragic fire took her life.

Fred Ward: Husband of Martha Ward, he walked out on her long ago, when Andrea was a young girl.

Martha Ward: Rebecca Morrison's critical and extremely pious aunt, who retreated into her religion on the day her husband left her. A few months after her daughter, Andrea, left home on her eighteenth birthday, Rebecca's parents were killed in a car accident and Martha took Rebecca in to live with her. She was estranged from her daughter Andrea for years, ever since Andrea left Blackstone and then moved in with (but didn't marry) Gary Fletcher. Recently, just after the fire that took Andrea's life, Martha Ward burned her house down around herself in an apparent religious frenzy.

Leonard Wilkins: A crusty seventy-year-old who ran the Blackstone Drive-In on the Western edge of town for thirty years.

Trudy Wilkins: Leonard Wilkins's wife.

Lavinia Willoughby: A patient at the Asylum from 1948 to 1952, whose treatment file Oliver finds in his attic and reads. Originally from Devereaux, South Carolina, she was admitted for depression and treated with hydrotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy. She died in the Asylum.