Annie (Annabelle) Adams is the 25-year-old modern-day narrator and protagonist of the novel. Unemployed, Annie is an aspiring mystery writer, and she has grown up with an artist mother living in a large house in Chelsea. The house is owned by her Great Aunt Frances, who Annie has only heard stories about.

Annie mentions she studied art at Central Saint Martins but doesn’t use this knowledge in the novel, focusing instead on a love of writing and solving puzzles—interests she has in common with Frances. Her eccentric visual artist mother Laura was a loving caretaker in Annie’s youth but created an unstable childhood for Annie, who often craved familial security. Annie found the family environment she wanted at her friend Jenny’s house. Annie’s blonde, pale looks are inherited from her biological grandfather, John Oxley, the vicar of Castle Knoll, and her biological mother, Emily Sparrow. Annie has a fear of needles and hospitals, and the sight of blood makes her woozy and likely to faint.

Annie unknowingly creates the inciting incident to the plot when she sends Great Aunt Frances a trunk with a body in it when cleaning out the Chelsea house’s basement. In doing so, she unknowingly fulfills part of the cryptic fortune Frances has lived her life trying to solve and becomes the “right daughter” spoken of in the fortune to help enact justice (15).