Peregrine McCutcheon

Peregrine McCutcheon is a character played by Dan Wheeler who appears in the podcast's M. R. James trilogy written by Danann McAleer (A Christmas Inheritance, A Residence at the Bay, and the upcoming An Uncommon Burial); he was in his 30s in the first scenario, and in his 40s in the second.

### A Christmas Inheritance

We met Peregrine once his friend Edward Caister invited him to spend some time with him and another college friend in a place called Warham Hall. It became swiftly apparent how much Peregrine appreciates and admires nature, especially plants and birds, to the point where his interest procured some teasing from his friends. In fact, he makes friends very swiftly with the previous master’s dog. We are told that he’d gotten access to the college thanks to a choral scholarship (and that he, therefore, isn't "posh"), and that initially he simply picked a career religious in nature for reasons utilitarian more than spiritual; he still refused, however, to perform any sort of catholic exorcism when asked.

Once circumstances caused him to be alone in one of the hall’s libraries at night, Peregrine had his first brush with the supernatural: a dead thing, perhaps a bear, covered in coarse fur lumbered towards him and he slashed at it with his knife once it bit him. Afterwards, while examining the bite mark, he noticed what seemed to be a child’s teeth within the bigger set: this disturbed him quite significantly.

Some time later, as him and Edward examined the hall’s herb garden, Peregrine picked up a whistle, played it, and later attempted to make his way towards the maze in order to aid his two friends, but was eventually sidetracked because of a man by the name of Leaf. This man eventually brought him to safety, away from the hall and towards the town of King’s Lynn, where he got picked up by a carriage. He was the only PC to survive this scenario.

### Time In Between

We don’t know much about Peregrine’s private life after the events of Warham Hall, but what we can reasonably suppose is that between the events of the first and second scenario he spent most of his time at his parish. He probably continued pursuing hobbies such as birdwatching and the study of botany, but most interesting is the fact that Dan mentions him to be “a true believer” in A Residence at the Bay, whilst in A Christmas Inheritance his faith was mostly superficial. Perhaps we can presume from this that after his encounter with beings whose motives and actions were beyond his ken, and after the loss of his dear friends, Peregrine changed his mind and decided to turn to God in order to process and rationalize these traumatica events.

### A Residence at the Bay

In this second installment, Peregrine is a man with the same hobbies as he had a decade ago, but a lesser amount of dexterity. He meets up with his old choir teacher and a paleontologist, who frequented the same school as him, and they all head to the Boggle Hole guesthouse. They plan to reside in this place for a time because of a request made by Robert, a mutual friend, but soon enough the proprietors of the house begin to show their true colors.

Here, Peregrine experiences the effect of a Hand of Glory, which makes him sleep for 18 hours (something he’s quite embarrassed by), and in an attempt to distance himself from the guesthouse he also suggests to visit the local church and rectory. After they speak to the local Reverend, who then disappears, the PCs encounter a suspicious boy, a wounded hare, and a scarecrow-like figure, which turns out to be the Reverend they’d just met. Peregrine promises to come back and save him as soon as it’s possible.

Back at the guesthouse, Peregrine is tasked with the job to render the proprietors’ Hand of Glory unusable, so he blesses it with his bible and cuts all its waxen fingers off (it seems that now he doesn’t mind the idea of exorcisms so much after all); the other PCs arrive in the basement with him and they all make their escape through a tunnel in the ground. They all exit on a beach, where they are picked up by some passing fishermen. One of them tells Peregrine that the boat they’re utilizing at that moment was sold to him by one of Peregrine’s friends from the first scenario, whom he knows to be dead.