Flossie Monro

In the short story The Adventure of the Peroxide Blonde (later chapter 14 of The Big Four), Flossie Monro is the peroxide blonde in question. She is an actress and formerly a friend of Claud Darrell. She responded to a newspaper advertisement inserted by Mr McNeil, Poirot's solicitor asking for friends or relatives of the man to come forward. This was part of Poirot's plan to discover the identity of Number 4.

Flossie claimed that she used to know Darrell very well at one time. She described him as "an artist", an accomplished actor who might have gone far it it had not been for jealousy. He was spruce-looking, neither tall nor short but well set up. He had blue-grey eyes and was more or less fair haired. Significantly, she told Poirot that Darrell had a habit of fiddling with bread at a table. He would pick up a small piece of bread and dab it around to pick up crumbs. This was something which he did unconsciously and was something he probably didn't even notice.

Flossie did not have any samples of his handwriting, but had an old photograph. She promised to send it to Poirot, but after leaving the meeting, she was almost immediately knocked down by a car and killed. The latch key of her house was taken and her house broken into and ransacked. The photo was stolen. However that act confirmed for Poirot that Claud Darrell was Number 4.

Flossie was described as "a somewhat lurid looking lady, no longer in her first youth." Her hair was "an impossible yellow, and was prolific in curls over each ear". Her eyelids were heavily blackened and she had "by no means forgotten the rouge and the lip-salve." It appeared from this description that she did not appeal to Hastings, probably on account of the colour of her hair.