# The Crime at Black Dudley — Character guide

> Key figures in The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham.

- [Dr. George Abbershaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/george_abbershaw.md): Abbershaw is a minor celebrity in learned circles, his standard work on fatal wounds making him the Yard's quiet authority on how people die. He arrives at Black Dudley on holiday, secretly in love with Margaret Oliphant
- [Albert Campion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/albert_campion.md): Campion drifts through the Black Dudley weekend party wearing the manner of a harmless eccentric, all vagueness and cheerful irrelevance. Beneath the fool's mask sits a resourceful mind that notices what others miss and 
- [Wyatt Petrie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/wyatt_petrie.md): Wyatt is the good-natured young man whose request brought Abbershaw to his uncle's forbidding Suffolk house, and whose Oxford-bred enthusiasms mark him as one of those interesting chaps with bees in their bonnets. He sta
- [Michael Prenderby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/michael_prenderby.md): Prenderby belongs to the small circle of guests assembled for the weekend at Black Dudley, a young man moving through the house's bleak corridors with the rest of the party. His presence adds texture to the group dynamic
- [Martin Watt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/martin_watt.md): Watt moves through the Black Dudley weekend as someone who knows more than he immediately volunteers, a presence whose information becomes valuable as the mystery deepens. He occupies the uneasy space between guest and i
- [Meggie Oliphant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/meggie_oliphant.md): Margaret Oliphant is the reason Abbershaw accepted Wyatt's invitation, a woman with a fine profile and a mind to match, not empty prettiness. She moves through the weekend party with composure, and Abbershaw's secret, sy
- [Chris Kennedy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/chris_kennedy.md): Kennedy belongs to the young house-party set that Wyatt Petrie has assembled at his uncle's forbidding Suffolk mansion, and he throws himself into the weekend's games with an energy that borders on the reckless. His habi
- [Benjamin Dawlish](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/benjamin_dawlish.md): Dawlish moves through the weekend party with the ease of someone who has been in the house before and expects to be obeyed, and when Colonel Coombe is taken ill he simply takes charge, shutting the guests away and answer
- [Mrs. Meade](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/mrs_meade.md): Mrs. Meade comes in from the village only when Black Dudley has company, and she regards the house and its German guests with a mixture of terror and righteous glee. Barricaded behind bolts and furniture, she treats the 
- [Dr. White Whitby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/dr_white_whitby.md): Whitby is the physician who attended Colonel Coombe and who, with Abbershaw, signed the certificates that smoothed the old man's death into respectable paperwork. When the young men corner him on a saltmarsh at four in t
- [Colonel Gordon Coombe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/colonel_gordon_coombe.md): Colonel Coombe is the nominal host whose seizure and death transform a weekend party into a locked-house mystery, but his real significance lies in the life that preceded it. For years he had been dominated by von Faber 
- [Jesse Gideon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/jesse_gideon.md): Gideon is the cool, contemptuous presence who bars the stairs and explains, with a smile, that the party will remain until it pleases his employer to release them. He is not a brawler but a supervisor, and his suspicion 
- [Anne Edgeware](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/anne_edgeware.md): A terrified young woman at the house party.
- [Eberhard von Faber](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/von_faber.md): Von Faber moves through the Black Dudley weekend party as a courteous foreign gentleman, set apart from the chattering English guests by his composure and his faintly unsettling habit of noticing everything. He is the ki
- [Mr. Haywhistle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/mr_haywhistle.md): A minor character mentioned at the house party.
- [Jeanne Dacre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/jeanne_dacre.md): A young woman, possibly a relative of a guest.
- [Wendon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters/wendon.md): A character mentioned briefly in the narrative.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_crime_at_black_dudley_se/characters