The woman in "Knight's Gambit" with whom Gavin Stevens was having some kind of relationship when he returned to Europe after the end of the First World War "was a Russian" (247). Stevens is talking to his young nephew about her, which may be why his account of the woman and the relationship is so vague, but the facts that she went "through a war too" and had to "escape from Moscow" by paying others to help her suggest she is a Russian aristocrat, driven into exile by the Russian Revolution of 1917.
In "Knight's Gambit" this is the engineer of the train Charles Mallison is taking to preflight training; he "blows the whistle at" Charles because he is holding up the train's departure (257) .
Although he is something of a private detective himself, Gavin Stevens hires this private detective to surveil Max Harriss in Memphis; as he puts it, "A good private man, just to keep an eye on him without him knowing it" (201).
In "Knight's Gambit" Rafe McCallum acquires the horse that Max Harriss buys from "some owner" who may have "ruined" it by trying "to break its spirit by fear or violence"; it is rumored that McCallum bought the horse "because its owner wanted to destroy it" (210-11).
Passing through Jefferson from preflight to basic training in "Knight's Gambit," Charles Mallison sees "the five- and ten-ton trucks of the bottomland planters and operators" (251). "Operators" here seems to mean 'managers.'
After rebuilding his house in "Knight's Gambit," Mr. Harriss "begins to bring friends up from New Orleans" (162); "strange outlanders" (163); "men and the women with a hard, sleek, expensive unmarried air and look about them even when now and then some of them really were married to each other perhaps" (163).
This man is a "neighbor" of Mrs. Harriss in "Knight's Gambit"; because he passes her property "on his way home," he can provide the people in Jefferson with information about Gualdres' odd behavior at nights (178).
In "Knight's Gambit" this is the "barefoot" field hand who is driving the carriage the first time Gavin Stevens sees the woman he will marry after he himself has returned from World War I (245).
The nursemaid who takes care of Mrs. Harriss' son Max in "Knight's Gambit" is "a light-colored Negress a good deal smarter, or at least snappier-looking than any other woman white or black either in Jefferson" (158). The Mansion also refers to this character as "the nurse," but does not otherwise describe her (217).
In "Knight's Gambit" Max Harriss is "well known not only to all the clerks and telephone girls and the Negro doormen and bellboys and waiters" at the Greenbury hotel in Memphis (208).
