Len Bateson

In the novel Hickory Dickory Dock, Leonard “Len” Bateson is a medical student who lodges at the hostel in Hickory Road. He attends medical classes at St Catherine's Hospital when a number of other lodgers also worked. Among the various strange events at the hostel, Len Bateson's rucksack had been cut up and his stethoscope had been stolen. Len was described as a big young man with fiery red hair. He was "a friendly soul, with a Cockney accent and mercifully free from any kind of inferiority complex." Later Mrs Hubbard, the warden of the hostel that she did not think Len Bateson was a plausible suspect for the killing of Celia Austin. He was "Warm hearted, generous, kind to a fault, but one of those fiery, outspoken tempers." Indeed, his fellow lodgers observed that he often had violent fits of rage. Later Inspector Sharpe found out that Len's father was a certified mental patient at the Longwith Vale Mental Home.

In Pension Vanilos, the TV film adaptation of "Hickory Dickory Dock" by France Télévisions, the parallel character is Pierre.