Watch out...

My character in The Mousetrap is called Mr Paravicini....I'll write more about him once the play is over, perhaps, but he's a 'man of mystery', as he admits, early in the piece.   And when he asks what people know of him, his own answer is, 'Nothing at all.'   A lot of this is intentional misleading on his part, of course.  He doesn't want people to know what he's up to.

There's a suspicion late in the play that he's into stolen goods; one of the other characters even claims to know that he has watches hidden in the spare tyre of his Rolls Royce.   Pure speculation.   Mr Paravicini never gives anything like a hint that that's what he's up to, though he does tease Sergeant Trotter at one point by saying that 'he plays the markets'.  Trotter assumes he means the stock markets.  Paravicini just says 'you misunderstand me.'

Back in the fifties, when the play is set, I'm not sure what watches he might or might not be hiding in his spare wheel.   (Seems an odd place to put them, to me.)    These days, if he really was a black marketeer, he might be filling up his spare tyre with mens diamond watches of this kind shown in the picture.  That one's worth a cool US$2,000.   In which case, Mr Paravicini would have no trouble paying his bill at the guest house he drops into on a very snowy night....