Claude (They Came to Baghdad)

In the novel They Came to Baghdad, Claude is an acquaintance of the archaeologist Dr Pauncefoot Jones. Before setting out on an excavation two years prior to the events in the book, Claude had, while in London, commented "most ethusiastically" about the legs of a woman named Sybil Muirfield. Pauncefoot Jones, who did not generally approve of having women at a dig, thought it would be "safe" for Sybil to join the excavation, seeing as she was "distressingly plain". But in the end, Sybil turned out to be a source of some unspecified disruption or distraction. Pauncefoot Jones lamented to his colleage Richard Baker that he should have listened to Claude as "these Frenchmen always hit the nail on the head".