Randolph Wilmott

In the Tommy and Tuppence short story The Ambassador's Boots, Randolph Wilmott is the ambassador of the United States to Britain. An incident involving him during an ocean voyage from America to England resulted in the main events in the story.

About a week before the events in the story, Wilmott arrived in England on board the Nomadic. A mix up happened to his luggage during disembarkation. Wilmott took home a kitbag which belonged to Ralph Westerham, an American senator. Westerham apparently realised this quickly and sent his valet to the embassy to return the ambassador's kitbag and retrieve his own. Wilmott did not know about this and only learnt about it when his valet Richards told him about the exchange. Both kitbags looked alike and as both men had the same initials, Wilmott considered the mix up understandable and thought no more of it.

However when Wilmott later met Westerham and mentioned the mix up to him, Westerham knew nothing about it. In fact he denied having such a design of kit bag among his luggage. Although no harm had been done, Wilmott was puzzled by the mystery and approached the The International Detective Agency to get to the bottom of it.

Portrayals
In LWT's 1983 adaptation of the story (Episode 6 of Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime), Randolph Wilmott is portrayed by T.P. McKenna. The portrayal is quite close to that in the original except that here he meets and is introduced to the Beresfords at a garden party. Just a few moments earlier, he had the puzzling encounter with Westerham. On learning that the Beresfords are private investigators, he decided to engage them to research his puzzle. In this adaptation Wilmott also has an additional scene where he takes Tuppence for a dance at the Green Parrot nightclub. Here he tells Tuppence about his encounter with Eileen O'Hara who was resting in his cabin on the ship after feeling faint and being helped there by Richards. In the original, Wilmott did not meet O'Hara.