Notes on the Settings and Characters of “The White Room” by L. P. Davies (1969)

Time Setting:
'The White Room' appears to open either on Friday the 8th of August 1969 or perhaps on the next day, Saturday the 9th. In reality it is a whole decade later, the actual year being 1979. - p 85

Place Setting:
Norfolk setting, south-west of Norwich but with what seem to be a mixture of real and invented places.
Grenfelle, a market town suburb (pp 23, 72, 84 - 85), location of the ancestral Champlee home, Barkley House

The Swan pub., run by the Lovedays in the small village of Littledene Corner (population = 50).

A house named 'Green Ladies', on loan to the Salters, near Compton Basset. - pp 82 - 84

Characters:
Axel Champlee, the 40 year-old owner of ISI International Sales Industries *, is the head of the Champlee family (originally Champ-de-lys) of Barkley House, Grenfelle. This Champlee family dates all the way back to 1411.
Axel's wife, Romaine Champlee, is absent overseas.
Axel's older sister, Carla Ibbetson, married to Kendall Ibbetson, who is also overseas.

Gregson, the butler, and Hazel, the maid at Barkley House.

Betty Wick of Littledene.

Adrian Wolfax.

Arnold Carter.

Bert and Mary Loveday, who run the Swan pub. (public house).

Miss Louise Salter (pp 39, 49), niece of a certain Doctor Vincent Salter, both of them recently arrived in England from overseas. When we first meet Louise, she is staying at the Swan.

Douglas Watten member of Parliament for Grenfelle.

Doctor Julius Sibault, a well-known psychiatrist. - pp 90 - 91

Howard Nolan, who visits 'Green Ladies' while Louise is out shopping, and strives to undo her good work with Axel. - pp 94 - 100

Plot Teasers:
Why does Axel Champlee leave the deserted Barkley House, and escape to Littledene in the last bus of the day?
Which of the places that Axel 'remembers' are real, and which are not?
Of the characters listed above, who are exactly who they claim to be? [And which characters are something else altogether?]
Who runs the Mosaic company, and what sort of business is it?
In the end, did Axel try to kill someone and, if so, who?
How does the 'white room' come into the story?

Quotes:
"He had to get away from here. Get away before the next move in the game, whatever that game was, whatever the next move might be. He must break the chain of events that had been set in motion. The only way to break it was to leave the house. Find some quiet place where he wasn't known, where he could hide while he waited for the effect of the drug to wear off." - p 23

"Right now, your mind's a mixture of half-remembered truths and hypnotically implanted lies." - p 63

"It was impossible to reach inside the minds of the people behind all this, to try to think as they were thinking, to try to understand their motives, to try to anticipate what their next move might be." - p 149

(Page references are to the Crime Club edition published by Doubleday in 1969.)

* ISI supposedly controlled a range of subdsidaries, such as (p 53) Dimura Cosmetics, Bardon Fabrics, Wellbeing Furniture, and Dewley Cars. The deadly rival to ISI was Farofex. ( )