General Grant

In the short story The Horses of Diomedes, General Grant is a retired Indian Army officer who had four "wild" daughters, all of whom had been mixing in bad company, drinking alcohol excessively and taking drugs.

Investigations by Poirot however showed that Grant was a fake. His house, full of Buddha statues and Benares bronzes, his bad liver, choleric temper and complaints of gout were all just a comic caricature of a retired Indian army officer. Poirot tested the gout but pretending to stumble and gripping the foot but Grant never complained of pain. Moreover, Grant had chosen to settle, not among fellow Indian Army officers but in Mertonshire, too expensive a place for the usual army man. In fact, Grant (his real name, if any, was never given) was the ring leader of a drug peddling gang. The four girls were not his daughters but had been recruited to push drugs among their friends. At least one of the, Sheila Grant, was an ex criminal who he had recruited from a reformatory.