The Poisoning Angel

by Jean Teulé

  ‘Who knows?’ objected Thunderflower.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the old lady, smiling at the stranger.

  Rain was streaming down the windows. In the fading light, the sky gave off waxen gleams that made it look like a shroud. Madame Roussel, who was terribly frail, with her embroidery gesticulating in her hands, looked kindly in her raie de Baud headdress with its flounce hanging down over her bent back like a cod tail. Since her back was shaking, it looked as if the fish were wriggling.

  ‘You’ve fetched up here drenched, but are you hungry?’ asked the hotel owner. ‘Put down that big bag and at the table you can tell me about yourself as you cut into this round loaf with its golden crust.’

  Thunderflower took only a little ball of bread and began working it between her fingers.

  ‘For me, earthly things scarcely exist, and my reality is only in a persistent childhood dream. I heard you were looking for a cook and am offering my services, principally because of the name of the hotel.’

  ‘Yet it’s not very enticing,’ opined the establishment’s trembling owner.

  ‘I see an empty future ahead of me while my past grows ever bigger, Madame Roussel. If you employ me, you, like many others, will taste the specialities for which one day I’ll have a truly amazing reputation – soupe aux herbes that’ll have you falling face first into your plate, cake so amazing you’ll be clutching your throat with both hands, and …’

  When they heard that, the ghosts of the Druids in Plouhinec, that moor of legends, must have had a good laugh into their green and mauve lichen beards. While Thunderflower spoke about her cooking, she was filled with passion. She moulded the bread into a little menhir and placed it upright on the table.

  ‘Take me on, Madame Roussel. Even if it’s for the stupendous wage of five centimes a day, I shan’t let you down.’

  ‘That’s agreed, then,’ said the owner, intrigued, ‘but I personally eat nothing but boiled eggs now, without fingers of bread for dipping. And I open the shells myself – I put the knife blade near them, and it trembles and they break. You take your pleasures where you can find them.’ The sick woman pulled a face, while Thunderflower shifted her chair and got abruptly to her feet.

  ‘Oh, no, not boiled eggs. Boiled eggs to be opened by Madame herself! Hélène Jégado serving boiled eggs, and not even spreading something special on the bread!’

  She bent to pick up her bag, saying sadly, ‘It’s a pity because I had hopes about that tremor that bothers you.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Hélène.’

  ‘It’s …’

  ‘Spit it out, for heaven’s sake. You’re killing me with your shillyshallying.’

  ‘I had thought that, with a small dose in my pastry … but if Madame can take nothing but eggs served shell intact, we’ll forget it and you can go on pricking your fingers.’

  ‘I give in, you insistent thing, Hélène. Put your bag down again and go and bake me a cake. The kitchen’s on your right, you confounded Breton.’

  ‘Will I find raisins, yeast and most importantly rum?’

  Once in front of the oven in the Hôtel du Bout du Monde, with the kitchen door shut behind her, Thunderflower took a long swig of rum straight from the bottle. A laugh kept the bottle at her lips. ‘Who cares what happens? Let’s just drink while the doctors’ backs are turned.’

  *

  ‘Your mother’s not shaking any more.’

  ‘Well, no, Dr Aristide Revault-Crespin. That’s because she’s paralysed, with her hands stuck round her throat.’

  ‘How did it happen, Monsieur Louis Roussel?’

  ‘I have no idea. Just now, as the night fell, I came back from the hotel stables to find my mother in her armchair, paralysed. Our maid, Perrotte Macé, had already gone to fetch you.’

  The doctor, who had arrived with Perrotte, had a white collarless shirt, a waistcoat with wooden buttons, and doubts. He was at a complete loss confronted with the old lady, frozen rigid.

  ‘I’m wondering what could restore her and must admit to a crushing sense of powerlessness. She appears to have fallen victim to a harmful substance mixed with her food. If she were dead, I would ask for an autopsy. Nowadays science is very powerful when it comes to asking questions of a corpse.’

  ‘But she’s not going to die. Oh, these doctors!’ exclaimed Thunderflower, standing in the open doorway of the hotel, which was very brightly lit thanks to numerous candlesticks.

  With her back to the reception she seemed to be watching the square.

  ‘Who’s that, who thinks she knows everything better than anyone else?’

  ‘Our new cook. Mother took her on this morning.’

  The son refreshed the open lips of his tetraplegic progenitor, with the green tongue and eyes so wide they looked to have been dug out. She remained absolutely still, with her hands at her throat, bent over her canvas, mute and mournful. The lace fishtail of her characteristic raie de Baud headdress trailed down her back, but the fish looked well and truly dead.

  Beggars were rushing across Place du Bout du Monde, to ask Thunderflower, ‘We saw the doctor hurrying here with the maid, shouting “Madame Roussel!” Has the hotel owner died? If she has, you need to give us something to eat. When someone dies, food is given out to the hungry destitute, who come to the dead person’s house at night. It’s a tradition.’

  ‘Shush, not so much noise, but of course I’ll give you something to eat. In any case, I’ve been waiting for you with this big cake on a plate – it’s barely been started. It’s better the leftovers go to the poor than go to waste.’

  She gave each shivering wretch a ready-cut slice, saying, ‘Here, take this but go and eat it further away. I don’t want to have to spend time clearing your remains from the pavements.’

  She poisoned people indiscriminately and as absent-mindedly as if she were throwing seed for the pigeons. For the men and women returning to the middle of the square, death was on its way. With the light from the hotel behind her, Thunderflower’s enormous Herculean shadow filled Place du Bout du Monde.

  Dr Revault-Crespin emerged from the half-timbered building, accompanied by Louis Roussel.

  ‘Give your mother a strong dose of magnesium morning and evening,’ he instructed him. ‘It’s an antidote. I don’t think it’ll be enough but maybe she’ll start shaking again.’

  He was astonished, then, to see the starving vomiting in the square. One of them was pleading for a drop of water to cool his tongue, as if he were surrounded by flames. At the same time, another finished chewing and in the blink of an eye collapsed as if his bones had dissolved. Their unloved shadows were all writhing on the ground. Like an echo, in the middle of the square bordered by tall houses, their death rattles all merged into one deep sound.

  The worried doctor gave his diagnosis. ‘No doubt it’s the vile cholera returning to Rennes, promising us nothing but a dirty stinking death. There’ll be no more murmured complaints from shivering down-and-outs at the corners of the square. They’ll fall silent. Good evening, Monsieur Roussel.’

  Thunderflower was puffing peacefully at her father’s pipe. Beside her, Louis asked, ‘Is that tobacco you’re smoking? Perrotte claims my mother was paralysed as soon as she’d had some of your cake.’

  ‘If she’s said that, it’s very wicked,’ the cook replied calmly, looking round at the maid, who had stayed in the hotel reception.

  Her gaze slid over her. It was the gaze of a wild beast, a big cat, but her voice remained soft.

  ‘You wait, Perrotte, one of these days I shall make you soupe aux herbes.’

  Splosh!

  On 1 September 1850 (the date was written on the front page of the newspaper – Le Conciliateur – lying beside her where she sat) Perrotte Macé fell face first into a plate of soupe aux herbes. Her forehead hit the rim, and the piece of crockery tipped up. It flew into the air in the kitchen of the Hôtel du Bout du Monde, depositing its green contents on the maid’s brown hair then, hitting the neck of the servant str
etched on the table with her arms out sideways, it rolled along the curve of her back, bouncing off her vertebrae, and fell on to the floor where it exploded into a thousand pieces. It was like a circus turn. Thunderflower had to stop herself applauding.

  Dr Revault-Crespin arrived in the wreckage. His soles crunched as he asked, ‘What’s happened now, Monsieur Louis Roussel?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea. I was by my mother’s armchair, in despair at seeing her still just as inert, when the kitchen door opened and Thunderflower announced, “Perrotte Macé has snuffed it.”’

  Shaking his head, the doctor walked round the kitchen table. ‘Was Perrotte having her dinner?’

  ‘Yes, a simple soup, I think, Doctor.’

  ‘A simple soup. Where’s the rest of it?’

  ‘I gave little bowls of it to the town’s shameful poor, who came running,’ said Thunderflower. ‘And, incidentally, they should be grateful to me for doing what I can to help them.’

  ‘And you, Monsieur Roussel? Any symptoms? Do you feel all right?’ asked the healer.

  ‘I’m fine, but Hélène didn’t give me soup. She cooked me stewed peas, and I must say they were excellent.’

  Having been right round the table, Aristide Revault-Crespin slipped a hand into the green slime of the maid’s hair, before taking a long sniff at his dirty palm.

  ‘Hélène, does any of these kitchen cupboards contain rat killer that might have accidentally got into the food?’

  ‘Any …?’

  ‘Rat killer, poison, arsenic!’

  ‘I’m not familiar with reusenic’h!’ Thunderflower burst out angrily.

  ‘Arsenic,’ the doctor corrected her.

  ‘You see, I don’t even know how to say it properly! No one can say they’ve seen any in my possession.’

  At the sink the doctor poured water from a jug to wash his hands carefully with soap, saying to Louis Roussel, ‘An autopsy would reveal the truth.’

  ‘Perrotte’s relatives would never agree to that, sharing the revulsion for opening a corpse that all peasants have.’

  Revault-Crespin wiped his fingers on a cloth, and said, ‘What if I were to order an autopsy anyway?’

  On hearing that, Thunderflower soon vanished. Going down Rue des Innocents towards the banks of the Vilaine, she groaned, ‘I was wrong. That wasn’t the end of the world.’

  ‘What? What’s that, Rose Tessier? You’re telling me there’s a former judge who’s now a law professor at the University of Rennes, an expert in criminal cases, and he’s looking for a cook? That’s who I want to work for! A specialist in crime. Of course!’

  In Thunderflower’s enigmatic green eyes, it was difficult to know how much was unbelievable defiance, and how much the desperate desire now really to throw herself into the jaws of the wolf. Sitting on the terrace of a modest bar where the neighbourhood servants liked to get together early on a Sunday morning – their day off – Thunderflower enquired slyly of the woman next to her, ‘And where does he live, your …’

  ‘Théophile Bidard de la Noë, tipped to become Mayor of Rennes one day, lives on the riverfront near Pont Saint-Georges. I’ve worked for him for fourteen years, first as a daily servant and as housemaid for the last three.’

  Glass of brandy in hand even at this early hour, the cook from Plouhinec gazed upon the shimmering waters of the river flowing through Rennes. Reflections bouncing off the Vilaine spattered green, red and mauve light on to the mist-shrouded clothes of the workers who, even on a Sunday, were beginning to unload pottery from Quimper and slates from Redon on to the quayside. Other men crouched down to lift sacks of chestnuts, which they would take by mule to Brest. As they straightened up, their legs cast shadows like bars on to the tall houses on the opposite bank. Thunderflower stood up.

  ‘Right, let’s go. Lead the way, Rose. Life is dragging on under this green tree, which, without appearing to do so, is holding on to its leaves!’

  The glass of brandy slipped through her fingers to break against the corner of the table and she burst out laughing. Amid the fragments of glass, Rose Tessier drank the rest of her cup of coffee. Round her neck she had a glassware necklace. Ageless and very thin, she looked like a horse the slaughterman has rejected. A bandaged ankle gave her a limp.

  ‘That’s from another fall I had at the beginning of October,’ she explained. ‘I’ll fall and kill myself one day.’

  Beside her, the servant from Plouhinec was not walking too straight either, which worried Rose.

  ‘Are you sure this’ll be all right, Hélène? Monsieur Bidard is very demanding where a cook’s concerned. He’s already dismissed three since …’

  ‘Oh, when he sees my references …’

  *

  ‘Hmm! Hmm!’

  The law professor from the University of Rennes cleared his throat as he reread the single letter of recommendation of the woman who had come to see whether she might suit.

  ‘“Hélène Jégado is an excellent cook. My one regret is that I am unable to keep her until I die …” That’s what I call a glowing recommendation! This missive from the abbé … Lorho has no date. So, since then?’

  ‘Nothing. I stayed quietly at his presbytery for fourteen years, and have just come from there.’

  ‘Ah, that’s what I like to hear. Just like Rose! I’m always wary of cooks who keep changing jobs. They never fail to cause problems.’

  ‘How right you are, Monsieur Bidard de la Noë.’

  That’s it, Thunderflower! Use the best of your wiles in the pretty art of deceiving a former deputy state prosecutor who takes you at your word.

  ‘Hélène, I have not yet decided whether or not to employ you, but the salary would be forty écus paid at half-yearly intervals.’

  Framed by the floral chintz of an armchair from the previous century, the specialist in criminal cases, born in 1804, a year after Thunderflower, looked hard at her standing there before him, her shining eyes glued to his drawing room wall. He could also smell alcohol on her breath.

  ‘Hmm! Hmm!’

  He stood up on legs so bowed they looked like the feet of his Louis XV chair, and went to whisper something in Rose Tessier’s ear as she was lighting a fire in the grate.

  ‘Do you know this person well? I find her lacking in honesty, and what’s more, doesn’t she drink?’

  The housemaid turned on her bandaged ankle with a grimace of pain.

  ‘That’s because on Sunday mornings, Monsieur Théophile, domestic servants let their hair down a little in the bars. It’s usual.’

  ‘Hmm, hmm. Today is 19 October. I’ll keep her on past All Saints’ if she proves suitable.’

  ‘Keep her, Professor. What will people say if you let this cook go as well? Just think, that would be the fourth since Midsummer Day,’ remarked Rose.

  ‘Rose! Rose! Rose!’

  In the middle of the night, on the dark second-floor landing at Monsieur Bidard de la Noë’s house, a sepulchral voice was heard. It was Thunderflower disguising her own as she scratched her nails on her fellow servant’s bedroom door. ‘Rose … Rose … Rose …’ she whispered.

  Several times she tried turning the ceramic door knob, but the door was bolted on the inside where a terrified Rose Tessier was sitting huddled in bed, sheets pulled up to her shoulders and a lighted candle beside her.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, her voice filled with panic.

  ‘It’s me, of course, Rose. Don’t you know this is what the Ankou does? Before he loads a victim’s body on to his cart he always calls them three times. So for you I’m whispering, “Rose! Rose! Rose!”’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘I can’t do that, Rose. It’s my mission to carry you off. No more café terraces for you on a Sunday …’

  ‘Hélène, is that you?’

  ‘There is no Hélène. There’s only the Ankou. That happened a long time ago …’

  ‘But I haven’t done you any harm, Hélène!’

  ‘You don’t need to have harmed the
Ankou for him to wreak havoc. Open the door, Rose, if you dare. Come out of the pond of your sheets, the swamp of your woollen coverlet, the mire of your sweat where you must be making bubbles.’

  Naked under a shawl fastened with an iron button, Thunderflower bent to have a look through the keyhole.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got much fatter since that soupe aux herbes at yesterday’s lunch, Rose. It suits you. Your legs are a bit swollen, of course, and your throat, too. Oh, you can’t breathe properly any more. You’d like to cry out, wouldn’t you, but you can’t. You want to knock over some furniture to raise the alarm but there’s none in your room, and in any case you no longer have the strength.’

  ‘I’m ill …’ came a tiny thread of a voice, barely audible, from the poor maid overcome by a nervous complaint, eaten up by raging fire.

  ‘Where’s the wound, though, Rose? Late this afternoon, Dr Pinault prescribed leeches and poultices but your condition’s worsening. That doctor’s a fool. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He says there’s no danger. Well, I’d say you’re very ill – I even think you won’t ever recover.’

  A ray of light through the keyhole picked out a green eye floating in the darkness of the landing.

  ‘This night, 7 November 1850, your hour will come.’

  The poisoner made this prophecy while she went on scratching at the wooden door with her nails. ‘Rose! Rose! Rose!’

  With a perversity that was perhaps innate, Thunderflower continued going to ridiculous lengths to disguise her voice while Rose Tessier – teeth chattering with fever and glassware tinkling as her necklace shook – struggled to stand on her still bandaged ankle and attempt an escape through the window. When she grasped the curtains, the metal rail slipped and fell, taking with it a dusty bronze crucifix – useless – which came adrift from the wall and fell with a huge din of metal mixed with the dull thud as Rose Tessier’s dead body collapsed, its skull slamming against the floor.

  ‘Hmm! Hmm!’

  On the floor below, Théophile came out of his room in his nightshirt to ask, ‘What’s going on up there? Rose, is that you? Are you all right?’