“If anything goes wrong,” he observed cautiously, “it will be most awkward. M. Kettering is of the aristocracy. It will get into the newspapers. If we have made a mistake⁠—” He shrugged his shoulders forebodingly.

“The jewels now,” said the Commissary, “what do you think he has done with them?”

“He took them for a plant, of course,” said M. Carrège; “they must have been a great inconvenience to him and very awkward to dispose of.”

Poirot smiled.

“I have an idea of my own about the jewels. Tell me, Messieurs, what do you know of a man called the Marquis?”

The Commissary leant forward excitedly.