Charles

Charles is the main villain of the horror story Jade Green, a book in which an orphaned teenage girl moves in with her Uncle Geoffrey.

He is a forty-year old man who frequently visits his father Geoffrey so that he can provide him food. He wishes to inherit the money in his will, and does not wish Judith to inherit any of it.

He is rapidly established to be rather perverted, as he wishes to kiss Judith, even though she happens to be in love with the miller's son Zeke, she happens to be his cousin, and she is fifteen while he is forty years old.

Throughout the book, he continues to stalk Judith as she develops a relationship with Zeke, the miller's son. Eventually, she agrees to shake hands with him, only for him to try to sexually assault her.

Eventually, after he realizes that Uncle Geoffrey is going to share money in his will with Judith rather than give it all to Charles, he proceeds to set the kitchen on fire so that he can steal the money, even though there is enough in the will to support him for the rest of his life.

It is eventually revealed that he had murdered the title character and chopped off her hand when she tried to defend herself from him, and that she had not committed suicide as Uncle Geoffrey and Mrs. Hasting had thought. Trapping Judith in a room alone with him, he attempts to murder Judith, though not before raping her.

Fortunately, she is saved by Jade Green, who as it turned out was trying to protect her from Charles rather than haunting the household as she had thought.

She proceeds to strangle him to death, thus saving Judith and avenging her own death.