Sergeant Bell

In the novel Hickory Dickory Dock, Sergent Bell is a Scotland Yard policeman who appears briefly in the novel during a meeting with Superintendent Wilding, Inspector Sharpe and Hercule Poirot. Bell's department is not mentioned but he tells the meeting that there had been a lot of smuggling of gemstones from South Africa, Australia and the Far East. In one case, a tourist in France had been asked by an acquaintance to carry a pair of shoes back to England. The heels of the shoes turned out to be hollow and packed with uncut diamonds. This suggests that he specialised in investigating smuggling. What he told the meeting helped to confirm Poirot's belief that students' rucksacks were being used to smuggle small high value contraband into England.