“M. Poirot, I am inclined to believe that you are correct in your assertion. I was misled to begin with. The incontrovertible fact that the man had been stabbed distracted my attention from any other indications.” Poirot was the hero of the hour. The examining magistrate was profuse in compliments. Poirot responded gracefully, and then excused himself on the pretext that neither he nor I had yet lunched, and that he wished to repair the ravages of the journey. As we were about to leave the shed, Giraud approached us. “One more thing, M. Poirot,” he said, in his suave mocking 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 towards the hotel. “I wonder in what direction he hopes to mislead me? A woman’s hair—h’m!” We lunched heartily, but I found Poirot somewhat distrait and inattentive. Afterwards 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.___ 16 The Beroldy Case Some twenty years or so before the opening of the present story, Monsieur Arnold Beroldy, a native of Lyons, arrived in Paris accompanied by his pretty wife and their little daughter, a mere babe. Monsieur Beroldy was a junior partner in a firm of wine merchants, a stout middle-aged man, fond of the good things of life, devoted to his charming wife, and altogether unremarkable in every way. The firm in which Monsieur Beroldy was a partner was a small one, and although doing well, it did not yield a large income to the junior partner. The Beroldys had a small apartment and lived in a very modest fashion to begin with.