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Characters / Laura Bow

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Characters from the Laura Bow games. Beware of spoilers.

Laura Bow

The titular main protagonist. An observant and noble hearted young woman with a knack for investigation.
  • Amateur Sleuth: In the first game, in which she takes it upon herself to investigate the party guests (even before the murders start).
  • Audio Erotica: The flapper in the speakeasies ladies lounge in the second game says she has a sexy voice.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Laura is a kind, optimistic, if somewhat unassuming and naïve young woman, but she's fully capable taking someone down through the power of her words and observation. This gives her quite the advantage over people who dismiss her as a dumb southern girl.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: The aforementioned flapper makes no secret she's hot for Laura.
  • Guile Heroine: Despite her naivety, Laura can be very cunning, especially in the second game.
  • Intrepid Reporter: In the second game, in which she takes advantage of her press pass to investigate the strange events happening at the museum.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed, since Laura is shown to be naïve, but other times she uses this to throw people off whenever she gets useful information during her interrogations.
  • Plucky Girl: Certainly the growing pile of bodies in both games doesn't seem to faze her much. In the first game, she does eventually start talking about how scared for her life she is, though this is only after discovering about six dead bodies.
  • The Pollyanna: Despite the grisly situations she can find herself in, Laura almost always maintains her sunny disposition.
  • Red Is Heroic: Like another American girl detective, Laura has red hair. This is partly for players' benefit, as it makes her easier to see in dimly lit rooms.
  • Southern Belle: Played with if Laura gets killed by the falling bell. Her death message proclaims she's now a REAL southern belle.
  • Took a Level in Cheerfulness: From the first to second games, Laura goes from modest to a noticeably more sunny person.

    open/close all folders 

    Cast of The Colonel's Bequest 

Lillian Prune

A close friend of Laura’s and granddaughter of the Colonel. She is seemingly a friendly and carefree girl, but is hiding an inner darkness.

Ethel Prune

Lillian’s whiney mother who is a severe alcoholic.
  • The Alcoholic: Is mentioned to have problems with alcohol. By Act III, we can see it is absolutely true.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Celie states that her alcoholism began after her husband's suicide.
  • Lady Drunk: By Act II she's tipsy at the bar; by Acts III and IV she's staggering around the grounds in a stupor.

Colonel Henri Dijon

The Colonel mentioned in the title. A grumpy veteran who has gathered his family and close associates to hear the reading of his will. The game takes palace in his old mansion.
  • Broken Pedestal: Lillian considered him to be her second father, only for him to rather cruelly tell her otherwise.
  • Colonel Badass: He's a decorated hero of the Spanish-American war.
  • Dirty Old Man: He's carrying on an affair with Fifi, who is in his employ and at least half his age.
  • Disabled Snarker: He's definitely very snarky, but as it turns out — not quite as disabled as he's led everyone to believe.
  • Kick the Dog: Tells an obviously upset Lillian that even though she thought of him as a father figure, he just sees her as an "insecure, whiny kid" who is no more important to him than anyone else in his family.
  • Pet the Dog: In the best of the two alternate endings, he'll let you keep the buried treasure as a thank-you for saving his life. Bonus points in a sequence that literally shows him patting his real dog.
  • Handicapped Badass: To give him credit, Henri has a cane, and when Laura sees him get out of his wheelchair, he is having difficulty. To put it simply, while he has a handicap, he's exaggerating how much it's affecting him.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Telling Lillian that she isn't nearly as special to him as she'd assumed only serves to add more fuel to her murder spree.

Clarence Sparrow

The Colonel’s shifty and short-tempered attorney.
  • Amoral Attorney: As Laura discovers, he's been embezzling the Colonel's money to stake on race-horses.
  • Kavorka Man: Despite his age, he maintains an affair with Gloria.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's obviously named off of Clarence Darrow.
  • Red Herring: Clarence is the most obvious suspect when the game begins. After the Colonel, he’s the most hostile person Laura can question and has clear motivation for killing the first four victims (and even argues with three of them shortly before their deaths). It isn't until Act V that his more relaxed demeanor, plus Lillian's increasingly Ax-Crazy behavior, starts to throw everything into question.

Gertrude Dijon

Sister-in-law to the Colonel and mother of Rudy and Gloria. A snobbish and arrogant woman.

Gloria Swansong

Daughter of Gertrude and granddaughter of the Colonel. A promiscuous actress suffering from an unknown disease.

Rudy Dijon

Son of Gertrude and only grandson of the Colonel. An extremely unpleasant and arrogant womanizer.

Dr. Wilbur C. Feels

The Colonel’s perverted doctor who really isn’t a very good doctor.

Fifi

The Colonel’s voluptuous maid who is quite popular with all the men in the mansion.
  • French Maid: Is French, is a maid, and wears a classic French Maid's outfit. There couldn't be a more quintessential example of this trope.
  • Gold Digger: Heavily implied to be this. The rest of the cast remarks (accurately) that for being a maid, Fifi doesn't do a lot of cleaning.
    • Though she can be seen dusting in the study and parlor, so it might be just them thinking she is. Also she's flirting with the butler, something one thinks a gold digger wouldn't do. Then again, she could be plotting to marry Henri to get his money and then, after he dies, remarry Jeeves.

Jeeves

The Colonel’s grim butler who keeps to himself.
  • The Jeeves: He's a butler, and his name is Jeeves. Played completely straight.
  • The Quiet One: Rarely speaks, and if Laura tries to speak with him in private, he just asks her to leave him alone, being the only character who never answers any of Laura’s questions. Though he is having an affair with Fifi.
  • Shirtless Scene: In Act V, Laura can find him in his room shirtless, getting ready for his date with Fifi.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He cleans up (destroys) the evidence at the scene of at least two murders without a thought.

Celie

The Colonel’s cook and alongside Laura is the only other morally sound person in the mansion.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Throughout the game she'll share all sorts of portentous words about how there's a "bad moon" and that she can feel "evil in the air." But try to tell her that Laura is continually stumbling across dead bodies, and she'll brush it away as just seeing things in the swamp mists.
  • Black Guy Dies First: Totally averted: she's the only character to survive the ordeal in both alternative endings, apart from Rudy.
  • Hollywood Voodoo: Celie is a practitioner (though she insists for good intentions). Unlike the hoodoo description, Celie is shown to be a devout Catholic and prays in a church. Given the first Gabriel Knight, this could be a case of Shown Their Work.
  • Mammy: Has many characteristics of a classic, stereotypical mammy.
  • Sassy Black Woman: Will often have something snarky to say when Laura or someone else does something foolish.

    Cast of The Dagger of Amon Ra 

Dr. Archibald Carrington III

The newly elected president of the Leyendecker Museum.

Yvette Delacroix

A flirtatious secretary of Dr. Carrington.

Dr. Pippin Carter

A proud Englishman who is the curator of Egyptology for the the museum.
  • Condescending Compassion: When asked by Laura about whether the Tutankhamun exhibit will appear at the Leyendecker Museum in the future, Dr. Carter stated that he would rather not embarrass his cousin by letting his Dagger exhibit outshine the latter's accomplishment.
  • He Knows Too Much: O'Reilly kills him because Pippin has meeting scheduled with Carrington, AKA Watney Little, and is determined to find the dagger.
  • Insufferable Genius: He is particularly enthusiastic when talking about himself or his archeological accomplishments, especially his discovery of the Dagger of Amon Ra. He also likes to emphasize how lucky the Leyendecker Museum is to have a curator of his caliber and he has eyes set on the museum presidency.
  • Jerkass: He is rude and dismissive to those he doesn't like or who offend him.
  • Named After Somebody Famous: He is named for Howard Carter, the discoverer of Tutankhamen's tomb. In-universe, Pippin remarks that Dr. Carter's is some kind of relative.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: The discovery of Dr. Carter's dead body, stabbed in the chest with a souvenir Dagger, inside a sarcophagus truly begins the story's mystery.

Wolf Heimlich

The dim-witted Chief of Security for the museum. Don't expect him to be actually useful.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Myklos likes to call Heimlich "Wolfie".
  • All Germans Are Nazis: Heimlich's appearance is that of a stereotypical German Nazi soldier and he habitually walks in a goose step.
  • Babies Ever After: In the good ending, Heimlich and Myklos get married two months after the story ends. Two years later, they have a daughter whom they name Morgana Wolf Heimlich.
  • Good Cop/Bad Cop: He plays the role of bad cop when Laura finds Ziggy's head.
  • Idiot Houdini: Thanks to Laura's success in solving the mystery, Heimlich remains as the museum's Chief of Security despite his incompetence.
  • Inspector Lestrade: He accused Laura of being the murderer simply because she was always the first to discover the victims.
  • Police Are Useless: Despite being the Chief of Security at the Leyendecker Museum, six murders occurred at the museum during his watch. This could also have something to do with O'Reilly keeping him off the scent.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Averted. He keeps a collection of various medieval weapons in his office. An improperly tied claymore could kill Laura if she fiddled with it. The culprit takes a spiked mace from the office when he finally decides to kill Laura.

Dr. Olympia Myklos

An eccentric woman with an intense love of paleontology, giving her a rather unnerving fascination with death.
  • Babies Ever After: In the good ending, Heimlich and Myklos get married two months after the story ends. Two years later, they have a daughter whom they name Morgana Wolf Heimlich.
  • Genius Ditz: She knows a lot about paleontology, but her strange and detached nature causes her to be very oblivious when the Countess spills the beans on who tried to kill her.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: She has a morbid fascination with death and the dead. In fact, one reason why Myklos is a paleontologist is that she enjoys being surrounded by dead things. For example, she has looked over both Heimlich and Steve for their scars and considers the Amon Ra artifacts brought by Dr. Carter to be a tribute to the wonders of death. When Myklos discovered the dying Countess in her museum office, her first comment was on the attractiveness of Lavinia's now-pale face.
  • Skewed Priorities: Several weeks before the story began, Myklos carelessly lost several Egyptian cobras in the museum basement. She seemed more concerned about the cobras' welfare rather than about the potential danger they could pose to human life.
  • The Stoic: She remains rather calm and unperturbed as the story's mystery unfolds. This was taken to an ridiculous level when Myklos remained disturbingly calm and fascinated when she discovered the Countess dying in her office from a cobra bite. It is likely that her personal fascination with death helped her remain calm despite the increasing number of violent murders around her.
  • Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Myklos has a pet ferret named Daisy and a pet Egyptian cobra named Barney, the latter of whom she keeps in her museum office.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Averted. While being chased by the culprit, Laura and Steve encounter Myklos' lost cobras in an underground tunnel. The cobras would have killed them, had Laura not been carrying some snake oil.

Ernie Leach

A rather sketchy but nice guy who is the janitor of the museum.
  • Handy Man: He is the caretaker and handyman of the Leyendecker Museum. Ernie also moonlights as a fence installer, which he describes during the story as a fencing job.
  • He Knows Too Much: Ernie is in charge of the alcohol vats in the preservation lab. Because that was where the Dagger of Amon Ra was stashed after Laura found it in the gift shoppe, O'Reilly overheard a message from Olympia telling Ernie to check the vat it was stashed in. As such, O'Reilly murdered him by drowning him there, leaving warthog hairs on his shirt.
  • Token Minority: He is the only African-American in the game's story.
  • Trapped by Gambling Debts: According to Yvette, Ernie has a gambling habit and is now in debt to a loan shark known as the Icepick.
  • Where da White Women At?: He is one of many men in a relationship with Yvette.

Detective Ryan Hanrahan O'Riley

The Irish American detective who is looking into the theft of the Dagger of Amon Ra. There is more to him than meets the eye.
  • Big Bad: He is the one who planned the Dagger's theft and he is personally responsible for all of the museum murders.
  • Evil Is Petty: In his attempt to steal the Dagger of Amon Ra, O'Riley has cruelly murdered at least six people with the goal of eliminating anyone who can trace the Dagger's theft to him... and he wouldn't have stopped there.
  • Evil Redhead: He has red hair and is the most evil person in this story.
  • Evil Wears Black: When he finally goes after Laura, O'Riley is dressed in a black hooded robe that completely conceals his features except for his hands.
  • Greed: You can claim O'Reilly committed the murders except for Yvette as financial gain, and it's considered correct.
  • Inspector Lestrade: When investigating the Dagger's theft and the museum murders, O'Riley always goes for the most obvious suspects. For example, he considers Dr. Tut Smith to be the prime suspect for stealing the Dagger of Amon Ra because the latter's arguments with Dr. Carter are well-known. When trying to deduce Dr. Carter's murderer, O'Riley's first idea is someone who didn't like him, which could be a lot of people considering that Dr. Carter is an Insufferable Genius.
  • Killer Cop: He is a police detective and a ruthless murderer who won't hesitate to kill those who stand in his way.
  • Leave No Witnesses: This is his motive for most of the museum murders. Pippin was determined to find the dagger and had meetings with co-conspirator Watney Little lined up, Watney himself actually committed the theft, while Ziggy and the Countess were Watney's partners in crime. Averted with Yvette, Ryan's motivation there was because she was with other men.
  • Love Hurts: He is a divorced man and he hates the idea of being heartbroken again. O'Riley once told his current lover, Yvette, that he would kill her if he found her to be unfaithful. He eventually carried out his threat in a violent struggle.
  • Manipulative Bastard: After learning about Watney's true identity, O'Riley made a deal with the English con man. In exchange for Scotland Yard's police file on himself, Watney would help O'Riley steal the Dagger of Amon Ra. After Watney is successful in doing so, O'Riley murders him to cover up the crime.
  • Officer O'Hara: He is a police detective and he has an Irish name and accent.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Table grapes are O'Riley's favorite food.
  • Walking Spoiler: He is the main culprit of the Leyendecker Museum mystery.
  • We Will Meet Again: After he is sentenced to 60 years in a state penitentiary for his crimes, he is seen swearing revenge against Laura in a prison yard.

Steve Dorian

A reserved and kindly man who does a lot of manual labor around the museum.
  • Dented Iron: Apparently, his job left his body covered in scars. To Olympia's delight.
  • Distressed Dude: Is badly injured by Ryan when Ryan killed Yvette. He was dumped in a coal chute and left for dead. Laura must save him.
  • Love at First Sight: He falls for Laura immediately, the feeling is mutual.
  • Hidden Depths: He's an art student in addition to being a stevedore.
  • Official Couple: He and Laura start dating in the best ending.
  • Punny Name: His name is a pun for stevedore, which is his job.

Dr. Ptahsheptut "Tut" Smith

A dignified though fussy representative of the Museum of Cairo who wants the Dagger returned to its home of Egypt.
  • Jerkass: An arrogant and long-winded man who constantly speaks down to everyone. Laura and everyone else in the museum understandably don't like being around him, even Tut's own friend Rameses can't seem to stand him.
  • Red Herring: He's set up as Pippin's murderer. He then vanishes from the story before Ziggy's murderer, and he's not seen again unless you get the good ending or randomly see him around the museum.

Lawrence "Ziggy" Ziegfield

An extremely nervous man who owns a speakeasy.
  • Friend in the Black Market: For his part in an art burglary scheme with the Countess and Watney, Ziggy acted as the middleman and provided forged paintings to switch with the real ones at the museum. He then sold the real paintings to private collectors and split the profits with his conspirators.
  • He Knows Too Much: The culprit killed Ziggy because the latter's underworld connections would allow him to eventually deduce the culprit's identity. And that assumes he didn't already know since the actual thief Watney Little was the conspirator.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He is killed when he is pierced by the beak of a life-sized pterodactyl model. The culprit cut the wires suspending the pterodactyl model from the ceiling just as Ziggy passed underneath. The culprit then cruelly cut off Ziggy's headand placed the head in the museum's Life Mask Exhibit.
  • The Informant: He has many underworld connections and resources. In addition to being Crodfoller's contact in New York's criminal underworld, Ziggy also acts as a snitch to the New York police in exchange for leniency.
  • The Paranoiac: Because he is a stool pigeon, Ziggy is distrusted by criminals and police officers alike. He is extremely paranoid as a result.
  • Twitchy Eye: Ziggy's trademark facial tic due to constant paranoia. (Note that this only applies to the CD-ROM version. His eyes don't twitch and look far less creepy in his floppy disk portrait.)

Rameses Najeer

A bespectacled man who seems nice enough, but holds some dark secrets.
  • Enemy Mine: After finding out that Laura is being chased by the killer, he gives her directions to escape and swears the killer won't leave the room alive.
  • Karma Houdini: Surprisingly, he and his corrupt cult are allowed to continue their meetings in the museum in secret. Granted, they seem to have stopped utilizing Human Sacrifice in their rituals, but Laura was still in sincere danger among them at first.
  • Pet the Dog: He may be the head of the sinister cult of Amon Ra, but he nonetheless has some standards. When Laura reveals the killer is after her, Rameses shows sincere concern for her (despite being quite eager to sacrifice her earlier) and gives her vital information to help save her and solve the mystery.
  • Religion of Evil: Part of a cult dedicated to Amon Ra, which involves Human Sacrifice.

Countess Lavinia Waldorf-Carlton

An elderly rich woman with a flamboyant personality.
  • Accent Slip-Up: Though she usually speaks in an I Am Very British manner, if Laura asks probing questions or presents her with shocking information, her natural Cockney accent comes out quite abruptly.
  • Almost Dead Guy: She lives long enough to tell Dr. Myklos that O'Reily was the one who attacked her.
  • Gold Digger: Sterling, her late husband, believed this of her. She denies it but it is clear money is her prime motivator, considering her art burglary scheme.
  • Grande Dame: Her behavior in polite society is very flamboyant, but this facade breaks easily when she gets flustered.
  • She Knows Too Much: The Countess was partners with Watney Little. In fact, she brought him over from England to run her art burglary scheme. Because of this, O'Reilly kills her so she doesn't blab about the dagger.

Watney Little

A weaselly thief who plays a major role in one of the games biggest twists.
  • Con Man: He is a notorious career criminal and most of his crimes involve fraud and larceny.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: After murdering Dr. Carrington, Watney disguised himself as Carrington with no one being the wiser...until O’Riley found out. The Countess was the only one aware of the plan from the beginning.
  • The Dreaded: He is known to Ziggy as an dangerous, internationally wanted criminal.
  • Human Pincushion: The culprit kills Watney by pushing him onto the quills of a preserved porcupine on an office desk.
  • Mole in Charge: By posing as the museum president Dr. Carrington, Watney was in a unique position for committing crimes at the Leyendecker Museum. For his part in an art burglary scheme with Lavinia and Ziggy, Watney ensured that forged paintings were switched for the museum's real ones and stopped anyone from investigating the thefts if they were discovered. He also had no problem with stealing the Dagger of Amon Ra during a routine walk through the museum.
  • Spanner in the Works: As he dies, Watney manages to write the letters "CP" in his own blood on an office desk. "CP" refers to the novel "Crime and Punishment" in the office bookcase, where Watney's police file is hidden. This file provides an important clue to solving the mystery. He's also the victim of one if his schemes gets exposed: Steve points out that he and the Countess are in cahoots, while Olympia will notice he walks through the museum at night.
  • Walking Spoiler: Knowledge of his existence alone is considered a spoiler.

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