In The Purple Wig, an investigative journalist, Frances Finn, sets out to discover the strange secret of the dukes of Exmoor and the legend of their mysterious hereditary deformed ear. When Finn meets the current duke, he is wearing a hideous purple wig, which apparently he never takes off in the presence of anybody. It would appear to be an ugly way of hiding his deformity...but Father Brown, who is visiting the duke at the time, is suspicious about the motives for wearing such a wig. As the investigation progresses, the story takes a highly unexpected turn.
