Bunstable


 * "A concoction based on everything Professor Homlomium and I could infer about your Jägermonsters. A miserable failure, of course."

This character appears in one of two forms. His default form, which we see first, is Doctor Haggard, a human-looking old annoyance, who seems to hate everyone and to be interested only in drink. But we soon learn that he means a special drink, kept in a locked safe, which transforms him into Lord Bunstable, a ferocious-looking yellowish monster, with jagged teeth like a Jäger. The twist is that it's Bunstable who's the rational, intelligent scientist, and Haggard who's the irrational, fearsome (apart from the fact that he isn't strong enough to be a threat) one.

Lord Bunstable is the leader or perhaps ruler of the dome that houses the Queen's Society, and he acts (with Agatha's help) as the detective to examine the murder of Professor Homlomium.

His dual form is the result of an experiment in which he tried to duplicate the Jägerbräu so that he could become a long-lived, powerful Jäger. He partly succeeded, but the transformation was not permanent, and he has to keep drinking his imitation Jägerbräu to stay in Bunstable form. The reason he doesn't just constantly drink it is that staying in that form will eventually result in the loss of his mind. But he hates being the useless, annoying Doctor Haggard.

Possibly Relevant Outside Information
H. Rider Haggard was the author of, among many other books, 'She' (short for 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'), to which a card in The Works refers.

Alaric Pendlebury-Davenport, Duke of Dunstable ("ill-tempered, irascible, and in the opinion of many quite insane..."[Wikipedia]) is a character from Wodehouse.