Bogus Duke of Blairgowrie

The Bogus Duke of Blairgowrie is an impostor who borrows a celebrated aristocrat’s name to draw Tommy Beresford into a lethal trap. His deception turns the social authority of a titled client, and Tommy’s own theatrical role as a blind detective, into instruments of danger: beneath the borrowed identity is a man prepared to imprison and kill his supposed investigator.

The Client’s Disguise

The impostor approaches Tommy’s agency with a story calculated to command immediate attention. He claims that his sixteen-year-old daughter has been abducted under peculiar circumstances and says he has avoided calling the police, choosing instead to contact Mr. Blunt. He arrives with Captain Harker and presses for an immediate return to his house. The urgency and the supposed client’s rank make the request difficult to refuse.

At the Blitz, a smart landaulette is waiting, and the supposed Duke himself helps Mr. Blunt into it. The courtesy continues the performance of a powerful client arranging transport for the detective he has summoned. It also carries Tommy away from the restaurant and into the impostor’s control.

The Mask Falls

When Tommy raises a hand to remove his eyeshade, the man jerks his arm down and presses a pistol between his ribs. He reveals that he is not the Duke of Blairgowrie at all, but a ham merchant who has lost his wife, and says he borrowed the Duke’s name because Tommy would not have refused so celebrated a client. The supposed abduction case is thus exposed as bait: the impostor has used a fabricated emergency and a prestigious identity to secure Tommy’s presence.

The disclosure is accompanied by another change of appearance. Earlier, as Inspector Dymchurch, the man had seemed a typical Englishman; now his speech and bearing mark him as a well-educated foreigner who speaks English without an accent. The discrepancy makes his identity itself part of the danger: the role that seemed most authoritative was only one layer of a performance.

The Blindman’s Buff Trap

The impostor keeps Tommy’s eyeshade on, explaining that without it Tommy would see as well as he does and the plan would fail. He then describes the room’s metal floor, studded with small projections, and clicks a switch to turn on the electric current. Stepping on one of the knobs, he says, means death. He unbinds Tommy’s hands and gives him his cane, offering freedom if he can reach the door without stepping on a danger spot, while keeping a pistol ready in case Tommy reaches for the eyeshade.

The trap turns Tommy’s apparent disability into a forced test. The impostor knows that Tommy is pretending to be blind, but controls when that act can be abandoned: the eyeshade becomes both the cover that made the detective useful to the deception and the barrier that leaves him at the mercy of the electrified floor. The game’s title, Blindman’s Buff, recasts a familiar pastime as a contest in which a single misstep could be fatal.

Performance and Recognition

The Bogus Duke’s method belongs to a wider pattern of deceptive roles. At the International Detective Agency, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have arranged telephone effects and a carefully staged office: Tommy plays the great chief, while Albert performs the part of an office boy. Elsewhere, Tuppence explains how a person in plus fours could pass at a distance as a woman by adding a skirt, sweater, felt hat, and curls, then change back by removing them. In this world, a convincing identity depends not on a name alone but on costume, voice, setting, and the expectations of whoever is watching.

Tommy eventually describes a separate piece of imposture in the diplomatic-luggage case: a stranger’s attack was designed to make him trust the woman who had brought him a story, while a supposed beauty shop concealed a smuggling operation. That episode reinforces the same practical lesson as the Bogus Duke’s false title: an apparent victim, client, or ally may be playing a role to divert suspicion. The impostor’s decisive advantage is not simply that he lies, but that he understands what his audience expects to see—and stages his deception accordingly.