Madame Colombier

In the novel The Secret Adversary, Madame Colombier runs a well known "pensionnat de jeunes filles" (a kind of finishing school for girls) in the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris. It had the reputation of being very select. Tuppence had several American friends who had gone there. At the beginning of the story, Mr Whittington offers Tuppence a hundred pounds to go there for a few months, posing as his ward. And because an English background could be more easily checked, he asked her to pose as an American.

Madame Colombier is only mentioned and what Whittington had in mind for Tuppence to do there is never revealed. Mr Carter later speculated that it could be the Kramenin's gang wanted to use Tuppence as a fake Jane Finn as a decoy for British intelligence.