As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- The reason Nightingale tended to get upset whenever Peter tried to relate magic to science, and give him the serious brush off in books 1-4 is because that is exactly what led to everything that happened at Ettersberg and Nightingale is still too traumatised by being left the only wizard still fit to practice by that battle.
- It took Peter a long time to make the connection between the crime spree in the first novel and Punch and Judy, even though Mr. Punch screamed out his distinctive Catchphrase lines from the puppet show each time he manifests. Given that Peter is fairly savvy about British history and culture, this seems incongruous ... at least, until you realize that Peter was born in the '80s. He would have been of an age to watch puppet shows during a period when Punch and Judy shows were rapidly becoming anathema, due to their misogyny and violence. So, he missed his chance to learn about that character during his childhood.
- Peter fails to notice that Punch has sequestered Lesley, and kicks himself for not picking up any vestigia that would've hinted at this. But it's probably not a coincidence that he overlooked it: Lesley was the very person who'd been chewing him out for daydreaming all through their police training, and he's also very much eager to get into her pants. So he avoids letting his mind wander — a necessary part of searching for vestigia — in her presence, and when he slips up and does so anyway, it's to fantasize about her sexually rather than try to sense anything mystical.
- The Faceless Man's open astonishment in book two, upon being told that Peter is with the police, makes more sense as of book six, which exposes the villain's identity, as well as his racist tendencies. The possibilities that someone like Peter might opt to become a copper, or that an old-school Brit like Nightingale would accept someone like Peter as an apprentice, would've honestly never occurred to a bigot who believes racial stereotypes: Chorley's initial suspicion that Grant is associated with the Rivers or from overseas fits into his skewed world-view far better than either.
- The Faceless Man's shifting opinion of Peter and less overt racism by the time of Lies Sleeping, viewing him as someone who'd do well in the Faceless Man's ideal world. It might be partly to soothe Lesley, but given his love of Arthurian lore he'd also be thinking about Sir Palomides, the Saracen who converts to Christianity and joins the Round Table.
- Peter's demi-monde nickname of "the Starling" may have more significance than his being "The Nightingale"'s more urbanized apprentice. Starlings, which are related to myna birds, are occasional mimics of sounds they hear, and the "Moment 8" mini-story reveals that Peter has, without even knowing he's doing it, been picking up bits of signare from virtually every other practitioner he's ever run across.
- In False Value, Mrs. Chin gives her name, rank as Chief Librarian, and a code number - 020:131 - when she's arrested. 020 is the Dewey Decimal category for "library and information sciences", and 131 is the code for "parapsychological and occult methods for achieving well-being, happiness, success".
- Walbrook goes by the name "Lulu" in Lies Sleeping. This very obliquely foreshadows the revelation that she dates back to the Roman era and was once worshiped as an avatar of Isis, because "Lulu", if rendered in the classical 23-letter Roman alphabet, becomes 'Lvlv', or 'Isis' offset by two letters.
- Nightingale recruits Peter to be the Folly's first apprentice in decades at a point late in the month of January. The memorial carved on the walls of Casterbrook dates the Ettersberg raid to January 19th. Small wonder, that Nightingale would be especially open to the notion of training up an underling at that time of year: he was probably nostalgic for having colleagues and more than usually conscious of his own mortality.
- In the first book, Peter rummages around the former carriage house and finds a nude painting of Molly. Several books later, he meets Foxglove, a close friend of Molly's and someone who loves art and painting. It's possible that Molly agreed to pose for the painting because it reminded her of Foxglove.
- "Charlotte Greenwood", the Williams family nanny in Lies Sleeping, appears to have been quite good at her job by Peter's reckoning, though he was briefly worried about her ideas of discipline. We later find out that she was close with Foxglove and Molly because they were sold together. Back in Moon Over Soho, Nightingale implies that Molly was likely very young when she came to the folly—she's consistently referred to as a "girl", there was initial talk of sending her to a foundling hospital to be fostered, Nightingale describes the staff as having "raised" her, and in Foxglove Summer one of Nightingale's contemporaries describes her as a "slip of a thing". Depending on their relative ages and whether/how long they knew each other before getting sold and split up, there's a good chance that "Charlotte" really was good with the Williams children because she used to take care of Molly.
