Professor Beddingfeld

In the novel The Man in the Brown Suit, Professor Beddingfeld was a famous paleontologist and one of Britain's foremost experts on primitive man. He settled in the village of Little Hampsley because it was near the Hampsley Cavern, a buried cave “rich in deposits of Aurignacian culture”. He spent most of his time underground with the curator of the local museum digging for artefacts in the cave. On one such outing, he absent-mindedly forgot his muffler and overcoat and caught a chill and died of double pneumonia. Despite his fame, the professor did not make much money from his publications and he left his daughter Anne very little money.