Page:Murder on the Links - 1985.djvu/134

 ing voice. “We found this coiled round the handle of the dagger. A woman’s hair.”

“Ah!” said Poirot. “A woman's hair? What woman’s, I wonder?”

“I wonder also,” said Giraud. Then, with a bow, he left us.

“He was insistent, the good Giraud,” said Poirot thoughtfully, as we walked toward the hotel. “I wonder in what direction he hopes to mislead me? A woman’s hairh’m!”

We lunched heartily, but I found Poirot somewhat distrait and inattentive. Afterward we went up to our sitting-room and there I begged him to tell me something of his mysterious journey to Paris.

“Willingly, my friend. I went to Paris to find this.”

He took from his pocket a small faded newspaper cutting. It was the reproduction of a woman’s photograph. He handed it to me. I uttered an exclamation.

“You recognize it, my friend?”

I nodded. Although the photo obviously dated from very many years back, and the hair was dressed in a different style, the likeness was unmistakable.

“Madame Daubreuil!” I exclaimed.

Poirot shook his head with a smile.

“Not quite correct, my friend. She did not call herself by that name in those days. That is a picture of the notorious Madame Beroldy!”

Madame Beroldy! In a flash the whole thing came back to me. The murder trial that had evoked such world-wide interest.

The Beroldy Case.