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CRIME FILES

Agatha Christie
and the Guilty Pleasure
of Poison

Sylvia A. Pamboukian
 Crime Files

Series Editor
Clive Bloom
Middlesex University
London, UK
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never
been more popular. In novels, short stories and films, on the radio, on
television and now in computer games, private detectives and psychopaths,
poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine
criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators a
mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series
offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of
guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime
writing, from detective fiction to the gangster movie, true-crime exposé,
police procedural and post-colonial investigation, is explored through
clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoreti-
cal sophistication.
 Sylvia A. Pamboukian

Agatha Christie and

the Guilty Pleasure of
Poison
Sylvia A. Pamboukian
Arts and Humanities
Robert Morris University
Moon Township, PA, USA

ISSN 2947-8340     ISSN 2947-8359 (electronic)

Crime Files
ISBN 978-3-031-15999-2    ISBN 978-3-031-16000-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16000-4

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Literary scholars study the past but hope to shape the future. This book is
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create a better future, and especially to Alina, Emily, Ava, and Auden.
 Preface

When I was a pharmacy student, there was an apothecaries’ garden near

my college where I used to loiter and read detective novels instead of
studying my textbooks. Although such gardens are now oases of tranquility,
they were once places of work where medicinal plants were grown and
tended. Today, some of the plants in the apothecaries’ garden are just food
(such as chamomile, mint, and fennel), while others remain the raw
material of medicine (such as vinca, ephedra, and foxglove). Still others are
called poisons (such as hemlock and deadly nightshade). In fact, some
apothecaries’ gardens call themselves poison gardens to emphasize the dan-
gerous side of pharmaceutically active plants.
In 2015, I had the opportunity to visit several apothecaries’/poison
gardens in the USA, Canada, and Britain. These visits clarified something
that I had long suspected—visitors to apothecaries’ gardens are often not
drawn there by a desire to learn about historical medical practices. They
are drawn by a desire to hear thrilling real-life stories about horrible
accidental poisonings and juicy criminal poisonings (just like those in
detective novels). When a customs agent at London’s Heathrow airport
asked me about the purpose of my visit to the UK, I said that I was visiting
poison gardens, and he eagerly supplied me with several poisoning stories,
including one about a man who passed out due to inhaling fresh-cut yew
branches and one about a woman who put poison in her cheating
boyfriend’s dinner. Apparently, everyone loves a good poisoning story.
This book explores the attractive power of poison—that sense of
curiosity and even naughtiness that draws visitors to poison gardens,
detective readers to books about criminal poisoning, and most of us

vii
viii PREFACE

(including my customs agent) to gossip about domestic poisoning. Instead

of arguing that poisoning is a terrible crime (which, of course, it is), the
book examines this sense of attraction to poisoning stories and to poisons.
I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie, who herself worked in a
pharmacy and whose books feature a dazzling array of poisons as murder
weapons. While most of Christie’s books present murder as a terrible
crime (which, of course, it is), I noticed that some of them display the
same attraction to poison. In these books, poisoners, especially women
poisoners, are a kind of likeable criminal, a good outlaw, whose crimes
make her community (and readers at home) cheer for her rather than
hiss at her.
Once I noticed the likeable poisoners in Christie’s novels, I began to
see likeable poisoners everywhere, in films, TV shows, and streaming
entertainment where certain poisonings were fantasies of justice, power,
and revenge. Quite a few of these seemed to me to echo other elements of
Christie’s works, too. So, this book starts with Agatha Christie and her
experience with poisons as a pharmacy technician. It then works outward—
first to her contemporaries (Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, and
Shirley Jackson) and then to more recent media that echo elements of
Christie’s work. It ends in the poison garden, where the whole project
really began.
Because poison gardens and detective fiction are supposed to be fun,
the book is written to be as readable as an academic study can be. In
addition, each chapter lists the spoilers up front. Details from books not
listed in the spoilers are part of the setup of the mystery, so these details
should not spoil the reading experience. I hope that readers of this book
will discover new mystery novels to enjoy, new films or series to binge-­
watch, new tourist destinations to visit, and perhaps new reasons to revisit
old favorites. I hope they will leave with a richer view of poisons, poisoners,
outlaws, and storytelling.

Moon Township, PA Sylvia A. Pamboukian

 Acknowledgments

This project began with visits to medicinal and poison gardens, whose staff
were very generous with their time and knowledge. I would like to thank
the Niagara Botanical Gardens and School of Horticulture in Niagara,
Ontario, particularly Jessica Bond and Charles Hunter; the Medicinal
Garden at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, particu-
larly Claire Dusak; the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, England; the
Torre Abbey House and Garden in Torquay, Devon, particularly Alison
Marshall; and The Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland,
particularly Alex Wright and Trevor Jones. I would like to thank the Duke
and Duchess of Northumberland for welcoming me into their beautiful
home and gardens.
The book might not have been written without research support from
Robert Morris University and the support of colleagues Heather Pinson,
Connie Ruzich, Ed Karshner, John Lawson, Jen Beno-Young, Emily
Paladino, Jackie Klentzin, Sushma Mishra, and Petros and Anahit
Malakyan. Similarly, I would like to thank John Erlen at the Falk Library
of the Health Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, and Charlotte Tancin
and Jeannette McDevitt at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation,
Carnegie Mellon University. I thank Janet Payne at the Society of
Apothecaries of London for kindly photographing archival material that
was important in the chapter on Christie and pharmacy. In addition, I
would like to thank Alison Graham-Bertolini, Alistair Rolls, and Steve
McClean as well as the reviewers and editors at Palgrave Macmillan.
Similar content on The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side was published
in the article “In the Apothecaries’ Garden with Agatha Christie” in Clues:

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Journal of Detection, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2016, pp. 72–81, by McFarland

and Company, Inc, publishers. As well, material on likable poisoners in
children’s literature appeared in “Sugar and Spice: Cooking with the Girl
Poisoner” in Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics edited by Melissa Goldthwaite
from Southern Illinois University Press and in “Fun and Games: the Joy
of Poisoning in Children’s Literature” in Poison and Poisoning in Science,
Fiction and Cinema: Precarious Identities edited by Heike Klippel, Bettina
Wahrig, and Anke Zechner from Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular
Culture, Palgrave Macmillan. While the latter two articles analyze different
texts than those in this book, the editors of these collections were
enormously helpful in developing my ideas on likeable poisoners.
Several scholarly presentations were also helpful in developing this
book, including “Agatha Christie and the Poison Garden” at the
C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society; “From The Speckled Band to the
Poison Garden” at the American Osler Society conference; “The Outlaw
Poisoner in Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Leather Funnel’” at the North
American Victorian Studies Association conference; “The Poisonous
Medicine Cabinet of Agatha Christie” and “The Snake Oil in the Grass:
Public Medicinal and Poison Gardens,” both at Northeast Modern
Language Association conferences. Many thanks to those who attended
these panels and asked questions or offered suggestions.
Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their support.
Thank you to Andrea for visiting poison gardens in the UK with me, and
to Shannon for visiting Niagara with me. Finally, I would like to thank Jon
for remaining stalwart through the ups and downs, comings and goings of
this project: thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where
I began.
 Praise for Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure
of Poison

“Sylvia Pamboukian strays from the well-trodden paths of Agatha Christie studies,
and the result is very satisfying. Pamboukian remains gentle in her treatment of her
readers, treading a judicious path between the didactic and the well-paced.”
—Alistair Rolls, Associate Professor of French Studies at the University of
Newcastle, Australia, and author of Agatha Christie and New Directions
in Reading Detective Fiction Narratology and Detective Criticism

“In Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison, Sylvia Pamboukian provides
a timely reassessment of the works of Agatha Christie. Pamboukian reveals how, far
from being conservative and formulaic, Christie’s fiction contains a subversive
potential located in the author’s reimagining of the female outlaw poisoner.
Drawing on documentary evidence, this fluently written study shows how
Christie’s pharmaceutical training grants verisimilitude to her depiction of
poison….”
—Steven McLean, Department of English Literature and Culture, Hankuk
University of Foreign Studies

“Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison by Sylvia Pamboukian is a pro-
vocative and carefully researched book about female poisoners in contemporary
detective fiction with a focus on the work of Agatha Christie. Pamboukian deftly dem-
onstrates that female poisoners are part of a pattern of female justice-driven retri-
bution in fiction that has been largely overlooked. This important book thus
revitalizes conversations surrounding women’s empowerment by repositioning
some of the many female poisoners found in detective fiction as justice-seeking
rather than as simple or spiteful mediums of revenge. Readers of detective fiction,
especially those who study Agatha Christie, and readers interested in feminism and
strong women protagonists will value the well-written insights and discerning
close readings within [this book].”
—Alison Graham Bertolini, Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies
Director of Graduate Studies in English North Dakota State University
 Contents

1 Agatha Christie, Poison, and Crime  1

2 Agatha Christie and Pharmacy 39

3 Dying Game: Unrepentant Outlaws in Christie and Doyle 69

4 Cheering Bystanders in Christie and Sayers101

5 The Revenger’s Comeuppance in Christie and Jackson127

6 The Poisoner’s Afterlives151

7 Readers and the Poison Garden185

Index215

xiii
 About the Author

Sylvia A. Pamboukian Formerly a pharmacist, Pamboukian is Professor

of English at Robert Morris University near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She
is the author of Doctoring the Novel: Medicine and Quackery from Shelley to
Doyle, and her research and teaching interests include British literature,
detective fiction, the Victorian Gothic, and the health humanities.

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Agatha Christie, Poison, and Crime

As the story goes, Sir Winston Churchill was once at a dinner party with
rival politician Lady Nancy Astor when he lit one of his famous cigars.
Nancy Astor was revolted and said sharply, “If I were your wife, I’d poison
your coffee.” Not to be outdone, Winston Churchill shot back, “Madam,
if you were my wife, I’d drink it” (“Wit” 2006). This incident may be one
of those stories that are too good to be true. In fact, some deny it ever
happened (Raynor 2014). But it has been told and retold for decades as a
classic moment in the battle-of-the-sexes. There must be something in this
story that resonates with readers, that makes us laugh at Nancy Astor’s
implication that one might enjoy poisoning an annoying spouse or at
Winston Churchill’s implication that poisoning is preferable to marriage
with a controlling partner. Seen in one light, this story could strike us as a
gross violation of the trust we place in our most intimate friends and fam-
ily never to hurt us under the guise of helping. Never, as they say, to betray
us with a kiss. In another light, this story is a delightful mixture of domes-
tic strife, retaliation, and poisoning. Why? Why do we enjoy stories about
poisoning, marriage, and revenge?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
S. A. Pamboukian, Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of
Poison, Crime Files,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16000-4_1
2 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

Poison and the Precarious Identity

For many people, the word poison conjures up cartoonish images of vials
marked with the skull-and-crossbones containing toxic green liquid that
emits smoke and melts spoons on contact. However, poisons are not
utterly toxic entities concocted in secret laboratories by mad scientists. In
medicine, a poison is any substance that causes “structural damage” or
“functional disturbance” in relatively small quantities.1 The substance may
be produced internally (like the carbon dioxide we exhale with every
breath) or externally (like the poison Lady Astor threatens to put in Sir
Winston’s coffee). It may be natural (like ricin or cyanide) or artificial (like
VX or sarin). Moreover, the same substance may act as both medicine and
poison. As alchemist Paracelsus aptly said, “All substances are poisons…The
right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy” (qtd. in Timbrell 2005,
2). To put it another way, the dose makes the poison. While one aspirin
may stave off a heart attack, a whole bottleful may lead to some undesir-
able consequences. Scholars Klippel et al. (2017) describe poison’s diffi-
cult-to-pin-down nature as a “precarious identity” (2). This precariousness
is easily seen in a number of commonly enjoyed foods: rhubarb (the leaves
are poisonous); peaches, pears, and apricots (the pits are poisonous); taro
and cassava (poisonous if eaten raw); and ackee and potatoes (poisonous if
eaten overripe or underripe). Our relationship with food has been called
the “omnivore’s paradox” because our fear of harm through food is always
in tension with the pleasure food provides us (Beardsworth and Keil 1997,
152). As Beardsworth and Keil (1997) describe, all animals eat but only
humans ponder the meaning of food: natural or unnatural, safe or tainted,
healthy or unhealthy, proper meal or naughty indulgence (168). For many,
food’s delicious taste, satisfying texture, and appetizing appearance are
sources of entertainment. But entertainment also derives from foods
known to be poisonous, such as fugu or puffer fish (Satin 2007, 203).
Since chefs who prepare this dish are carefully trained, diners are unlikely
to be poisoned, but the thrill of being near poison is clearly part of the fun
of eating fugu. Perhaps the thrill of being near poison (but not poisoned)
begins to explain some of our desire to hear a story about poisoned coffee
while we comfortably sip our own (presumably safe) beverage.
If poison has a precarious identity, Klippel, Wahrig, and Zechner con-
sider the poisoner to have a similarly precarious identity. Poisoners in

1
Dorland’s Pocket Medical Dictionary. 24th ed. Saunders, 1982
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 3

culture (fiction, nonfiction, true crime, film) may be viewed as “ingenious,

crazy, criminal, or conscienceless,” or may simply be “victims of domestic
tortures for whom murder by poisoning seems the only way out” (Klippel
et al. 2017, 4). In this reading, poisoners may be villains or victims, crazy
or cunning, without conscience or without hope. Cheryl Blake Price’s
work on the poisoner in Victorian literature concurs that the poisoner is a
flexible figure that may be readily adapted to specific social situations. In
Victorian literature, the poisoner is “an ever-shifting figure that absorbed
and reflected pressing social anxieties. The fictional poisoner appears in a
number of guises – such as middle-class wife [or perhaps upper-class wife
like Nancy Astor?] or the socially mobile professional man – that were of
particular Victorian concern and which authors used to analyze sites of
cultural contestation” (Blake Price 2019, 18). Where Blake Price views the
Victorian poisoner as the site of anxiety, Sarah Crosby views certain
American poisoners as potential sites of aspiration. Crosby (2016) argues
that the Jacksonian female poisoner is sometimes portrayed with positive
qualities because she is a metaphor for American authorship. This poisoner
stands for the author as one the American people against British elitism;
however, this poisoner stands for male authors only. This poisoner does
not reflect upon women’s status or lived experience and doesn’t even rep-
resent female authors because (to many Jacksonian Americans) “women
are meant to be metaphors, not shapers of them” (Crosby 2016, 48).
While Blake Price and Crosby describe the poisoner as a flexible figure
used to mark a boundary in a larger cultural debate, Klippel, Wahrig, and
Zechner assert that the poisoner is precarious not just flexible. While
authors might use a specific kind of poisoner to make a specific point (flex-
ible), the precarious poisoner always carries the potential for alternate
readings and multiple narratives.
If we return to the story of Sir Winston and Lady Aster, we can see this
precariousness at work, because the story touches upon multiple hotly
contested concepts simultaneously. Where Lady Astor asserts that women
are fed up with their husbands’ inconsiderate behavior (smoking), Sir
Winston counters that men are fed up with their wives’ controlling behav-
ior (nagging). Where Lady Astor treats poison as a way for put-upon
women to even the score with their more empowered husbands (women
couldn’t smoke like men), Sir Winston treats poison as a way for men to
escape from women who don’t know their place (which is to indulge their
husbands’ smoking). Are we supposed to be on Astor’s side or on
Churchill’s? Does our previous knowledge about these famous people
4 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

affect our sympathy? Is the poisoner a villain or is the poisoned really the
villain (getting his due comeuppance for domestic misconduct)? Can we
see them both as victims or both as villains in an unfair system? Is the poi-
son in the cup or in the institution of marriage itself? As much as a narrator
might want to choose only one meaning, poison carries all of these at
once. Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) suggests that multiple
styles, voices, and perspectives exist simultaneously within a text. This
multiplicity or heteroglossia cannot be reduced to only one official voice
but is always open-ended, changeable, and responsive, drawing in and
transforming voices from other texts and from everyday language. In
Bakhtin’s carnival, this one official voice is overwhelmed altogether by
usually repressed voices in a topsy-turvy festival of laughter, community,
equity, and humanity. In carnival, seriousness can give way to silliness,
lower- and upper-class people can meet as equals, modest people can shout
obscenities, and fools can be crowned kings. A drawback, of course, to the
freedom of carnival is its limited time frame. There remains a question
about whether the freedom of carnival genuinely allows settled hierarchies
to be unsettled, or whether what happens in carnival stays in carnival. The
Churchill-Aster story also raises these same questions about whether hier-
archies are destabilized or not. Laughing at the notion of poisoning one’s
annoying spouse may momentarily reverse the order of things (turning
poisoning from crime into joke, coffee-making from chore to weapon),
but it may or may not affect mainstream culture’s dominant view of mas-
culinity, femininity, domesticity, and justice.
Certainly, the mainstream view of poison is not as a joke, quite the con-
trary. The dominant tropes about poisoning represent it as the worst of
crimes and poisoners as the worst of villains. The wicked Queen in Snow
White is a well-known example.2 The Queen begins her campaign with
murder-for-hire (when she asks a woodsman to kill Snow White). In the
1937 Disney version, the Queen then goes to the Dwarves’ house in dis-
guise and offers Snow White a poisoned apple (Hand 1937), but, in an
earlier version called “Little Snow White” from the Brothers Grimm
(1922), the Queen first approaches the Dwarves’ house as a peddler selling

2
According to Ashliman (2004), the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification for this story is
ATU 709. In some variants, the stepmother and the witch are different characters, and the
witch uses a poisonous ring, poisoned drink, or poisoned sweetmeats to kill Snow White.
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 5

laces.3 She laces up Snow White’s bodice too tightly and asphyxiates her
(the Dwarves cut the lace later). Still disguised as a peddler, the Queen
visits the house a second time and combs Snow White’s hair with a poi-
soned comb (the Dwarves take it out later). For her third try, the Queen
creates the poisoned apple—a second poisoning after the unsuccessful
comb incident. In both the Disney and the Grimm versions of the story,
food poisoning is apparently the most heinous of crimes because the story
progresses up the crime hierarchy from open violence to behind-the-­back
strangulation to clothing poisoning to food poisoning (with some witch-
craft to boot). In the case of the woodsman, Snow White can fight back,
but, in the case of the Queen, Snow White doesn’t even know she’s being
attacked until it is too late.
The Queen is not alone. There is a long tradition of villainous poisoners
in literature, myth, and legend, many of whom overlap with the figure of
the wicked witch.4 In The Odyssey, Circe transforms Odysseus’s crew into
swine using magical food. Since hospitality is an important value in the
culture of The Odyssey, Circe’s act is a terrible betrayal of her guests and of
the proper order of things. In Euripides’s play, Medea sends Jason’s new
wife a poisonous dress, and Deianira offers her husband, Heracles, a poi-
sonous shirt that kills him. In Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the evil
Cardinal tricks his mistress, Julia, into kissing a poisoned Bible. Talk about
betraying with a kiss. In the familiar Hamlet, the incestuous usurper-king
Claudius attempts to kill his nephew Hamlet by sending the young man to
England for execution. As in “Little Snow White,” the royal child avoids
violent death, so Claudius arranges a dual between Hamlet and his rival,
Laertes, but Claudius and Laertes decide that Laertes will use a poisoned
blade, so they can kill Hamlet by scratching him (like the Queen and Snow
White’s comb). For good measure, the King also offers Hamlet a poisoned
cup of wine. Like the Queen’s apple, the wine appears to be the apex of
the crime hierarchy, because it comes last and seems most duplicitous.
Other legendary figures are also associated with poisoning the food and
drink of friends and relations, including Lucrezia Borgia (who reportedly

3
The Grimm tales were translated into English in 1823 with at least 30 editions between
1823 and 1900. The Disney film version appeared in 1937 (Hand). Many critics address the
adaptation of fairy tales into various media including Zipes (2012), Rankin (2007), Sullivan
(1990), and Greenhill and Matrix (2010).
4
Unfortunately, this introduction cannot offer a full history of poisoning in literature. See
Eidinow (2016), Hallissy (1987), Pollard (1999), Satin (2007), and Trestrail (2001).
6 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

poisoned rivals to aid her brother-lover Cesare), La Toffana (who suppos-

edly poisoned hundreds of unwanted husbands with her aqua Toffana),
and Madeleine d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (who poisoned her
father and brother for an inheritance) (Emsley 2005, 142). Whether these
women truly lived up to their legends is questionable; however, their sto-
ries draw upon the literary trope of the ambitious, perverse, selfish, greedy,
and treacherous poisoner.
As with the Queen, whose apple recalls the first woman “poisoner,”
Eve, the villainous poisoner is stereotypically a woman, because poisoning
supposedly reflects women’s nature as cunning and untrustworthy
(although, of course, both men and women poison).5 In his landmark
study, Alan Macfarlane (1970) asserts that two crimes were considered
particularly feminine during the early modern period: witchcraft and poi-
soning (16).6 The same Latin term, veneficium, was used to accuse both
witches and poisoners (Walker 2003, 144; Martin 2008, 127). In his early
modern text on witchcraft, Reginald Scot (1584/1886) even translates
the well-known Biblical injunction “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”
as “Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live” (92). While early modern
men (perhaps afraid of appearing weak and cowardly) ridiculed the threat
posed by violent women by dismissing such women as screaming harri-
dans, they did not ridicule female witches or poisoners, because there was
no way for a man, however manly, to defend himself against them (Walker
2003, 81, 144). Those convicted of poisoning faced extremely harsh pen-
alties—boiling in oil at one point during the reign of Henry VIII or burn-
ing at the stake, the latter preferred for women who poisoned their
husbands in a crime called “petty treason” (Walker 2003, 138; Wilson
2013, 13). While high treason betrayed king and country, petty treason
betrayed a woman’s lord—her husband. If mainstream, Protestant, English
culture demonized women who rejected their proper, God-given, submis-
sive role by poisoning their lord and husband, scholars of early modern
English crime pamphlets also identify moments where poisoning exhibits
its precarious identity. For example, although condemning women who
poison, some crime pamphlets include stories praising female poisoners as

5
See Walker (2003) for early modern poisoning tallies and gender. See also Hallissy
(1987), Watson (2004), Trestrail (2001), Satin (2007), and Klippel et al. (2017).
6
Macfarlane (1970) notes that contemporary Reginald Scot (1584/1886) exhorts his
readers to pity witches as marginalized women. Other critics note hostility toward witches
because of their economic status (poor), social status (widowed, mentally ill), and behavior
(begging, scolding, gossiping, threatening). See also Levine (1994) and Sharpe (1996).
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 7

avengers, such as Castiglione’s Camma who poisons her rapist, thereby

turning poison from an “instrument of evil” into a “tool of resistance”
(Walker 2003, 288; Wilson 2013, 153). While female avenger stories
“offer English readers an alternative model for understanding poisoning
in the domestic sphere” (Wilson 2013, 153), they are the stuff of legend,
not viable models with which to address real-life abuse (Wilson 2013,
166). That said, some accounts of early modern trials imply that juries
really did look sympathetically on female poisoners if the poisoning was
viewed as justified retaliation for wife-beating or other wrongdoing
(Martin 2008, 18, 137). Similarly, Garthine Walker (2003) suggests that
amid the general condemnation of poisoning some early modern authors
hinted that poisoning might be a Providential punishment, a well-deserved
judgment upon wife-beaters and other miscreants (143). The suggestion
that poisoning is Providential momentarily upends typical domestic and
social hierarchies by transforming the properly submissive wife into the
tool of divine justice. That said, while each of these scholars finds alternate
voices bubbling up through the villainous poisoner narrative, they concur
that the dominant view remained that poisoners, especially women poi-
soners, were villains.
As poisoning lost its Providential and religious aspects in the late eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, Cheryl Blake Price (2019) suggests
that it developed stronger links with medicine.7 Stories of depraved and
treacherous physician-poisoners such as Dr. Palmer, Dr. Pritchard, and Dr.
Cream filled newspapers and courtrooms (and execution places) with
crowds properly scandalized at the gruesome deaths of helpless patients
and trusting family members.8 Villainous physician-poisoners (or scientist-­
poisoners) in literature include Count Fosco in The Woman in White
(1859) (who may or may not have murdered a helpless invalid to steal an
heiress’s fortune); the physicians in Charlotte’s Inheritance (1868) (who
preside over the poisoning of father and daughter); and Dr. Roylott in the
Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (1892)
(who is suspected of ingeniously poisoning his stepdaughters to steal their
inheritances). But poison may create heroes as well as villains. Previously,

7
Most poisoners are not really either women or medical professionals, but these groups are
disproportionately represented in fiction. Blake Price (2019) examines both the female poi-
soner and the physician-poisoner in Victorian fiction in depth.
8
For more on male physician-poisoners of the Victorian period (particularly physicians
Palmer, Pritchard, Crippen, and Cream), see McLaren (1993), Bates (2014), Burney (2006),
Emsley (2005), and Trestrail (2001).
8 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

witnesses to a crime were those who had seen events unfold, but the medi-
cal toxicologist was a new kind of witness because he did not see the crime
occur yet his expertise (all Victorian toxicologists were men) allowed him
to find the truth (Burney 2006, 5).9 Toxicologists such as Alfred Swaine
Taylor and Robert Christison testified in high-profile poisoning cases and
were recognized by avid newspaper readers as admirable public figures,
perhaps even minor celebrities (Mangham 2007, 97). Yet, Thomas de
Quincey’s 1827 essay “Murder, as considered one of the fine arts,” ironi-
cally hints that popular interest in poison was driven less by admiration for
science than by ghoulish pleasure. De Quincey (2015) outlines the ele-
ments of a juicy murder story: an angelic victim, a villainous murderer, and
a dark night, and he tut-tuts those who murder the sick, since the poor
invalids are “quite unable to bear it.”10 Poison, it seems, could turn some
physicians into villains and others into heroes, but it delighted the reading
public, who thrilled to stories of poisoning from their own (presumably
safe) parlors.
As in real-life crime cases, sensation fiction of the 1860s titillated all
classes of Victorian readers by “eliciting a physical sensation with its sur-
prises, plot twists, and startling revelations” (P. Gilbert 2011, 2).11 On one
hand, sensation novels often relied on the familiar wicked poisoner trope,
such as the mysterious foreign chemist Count Fosco in The Woman in
White (1859) who uses his knowledge of chemistry to assist a shady
English baronet abuse his wife under the guise of protecting her. On the
other hand, they might highlight a more subversive type of poisoner, as in
Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Trail of the Serpent (1861). This lesser-known
novel depicts a sympathetic poisoner in Valerie de Marolles who is tricked
by her would-be seducer into poisoning her loving husband in retaliation
for his supposed infidelity (at a performance of the opera Lucrezia Borgia,
no less). Her seducer, Jabez North, has already poisoned an innocent
schoolboy and then proceeds to blackmail Valerie. Meanwhile, her

9
Emsley (2005), Timbrell (2005), and Trestrail (2001) examine the development of toxi-
cology as a science.
10
In the second sequel, “Post script” written in 1854, de Quincey’s ironic tone becomes
melodramatic.
11
Winifred Hughes’s (1980) pioneering work on this genre treats sensation novels as para-
doxes: they have Gothic thrills but a modern setting (modern to Victorians, of course),
melodramatic plots but realistic details. For a discussion of the genre, especially its relation-
ship to true crime, see Mangham (2007), Sturrock (2004), Worsley (2014), and Blake
Price (2019).
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 9

husband (who was not killed) loves Valerie all the more, flattered that she
would rather see him dead than with another woman.12 Where Jabez is
hated for his treachery, Valerie is admired because her poisoning is seen as
a spirited rejection of proper female submission. John Ruskin’s
(1865/1998) description of the ideal woman in Sesame and Lilies (1865)
makes clear how far Valerie is from a proper Victorian lady:

She [The Victorian woman] must be enduringly, incorruptibly good;

instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-­
renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that
she may never fail from his side: wise, not with the narrowness of insolent
and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely vari-
able, because infinitely applicable, modesty of service—the true changeful-
ness of woman. (“Lecture Two: Lilies of the Queens’ Gardens”)

Casting away abnegation and obedience, Valerie de Marolles thrills her

husband (and readers) by aggressively pursuing love, revenge, and per-
sonal freedom, outside the law and well beyond social norms. Her story
may have appealed to readers as an antidote to the “smothering respecta-
bility” of Victorian middle-class life (P. Gilbert 2011, 37), but it is not
clear whether sensational poisoners like Valerie unsettled social norms or
merely offered the momentary pleasure of topsy-turvy escapism.13
Far from loosening cultural attitudes, depictions of female poisoners in
nineteenth-century sensation fiction and true-crime stories may have actu-
ally reinforced traditional views of femininity, masculinity, and domesticity.
Extensive press coverage of female poisoners such as Sarah

12
Maia McAleavey (2015) suggests that the sensational bigamist could be sympathetic or
villainous (or both) (7).
13
Lyn Pykett (1992) argues that sensation fiction “articulated suppressed female emotions
and expressed women’s covert anger at the limitations of their social and domestic circum-
stances” (49). Andrew Mangham (2007) identifies a “reciprocal exchange of inspiration”
between the sensation novel and real-life violent crimes, making clear the repressed darkness
behind the stereotypical angel in the house (5–8). Pamela K. Gilbert (2011) proposes that
sensation novels troubled notions of the “good woman” but could ultimately reinforce
restrictive ideals (like Ruskin’s) or oppose these ideals (3). Marlene Tromp (2000) argues
that the popular furor over sensation fiction indicates that “the novels were effectively upend-
ing received knowledge, but doing so at a site in which there was already enough disruption
to make such images palatable” (104). Ann Cvetkovich (1992) finds the sensation novel
potentially expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo or rechanneling criticism of the
status quo back into mere consumerism. Elaine Showalter (1976) suggests that sensation
fiction expressed repressed desires and rebelled against the status quo.
10 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

Chesham—who poisoned several husbands and children—may have

spurred Parliament to pass the Arsenic Act of 1851, the first legislation in
England regulating the sale of poisons (Knelman 1998, 52). Criminologist
Cesare Lombroso used the case of the notorious Madame Defarge—who
may have poisoned her abusive husband—to theorize that women were
less evolved than men and so more vindictive (Downing 2009, 122). In
doing so, Lombroso uses new science to reinforce the old trope of the
wicked woman poisoner, both unfeminine (breaking natural laws) and
criminal (breaking human laws). Even those who argued for Madam
Defarge and other poisoners’ acquittals may have done so on the sexist
grounds that a lady couldn’t possibly have had the gumption to poison a
man (Downing 2009, 127). The helpless lady defense, of course, worked
best for middle- and upper-class women, like Madame Defarge, with
whom middle-class readers might sympathize (Hartman 1977, 3). It did
not work for hard-­scrabble, working-class women like Sarah Chesham or
for those suspected of unladylike conduct like Florence Maybrick, whose
adultery convinced her judge she must have overdosed her husband
despite his known drug abuse (Knelman 1998, 118).14 As Nicola Lacey
(2008) argues, criminal women might have been seen as monsters or as
victims—of hormones, of male influence—but they were often not seen as
independent and powerful agents, like the early modern female witch or
avenger.15 Even Valerie de Marolles could be interpreted as merely a weak-
minded dupe of Jabez North rather than as a woman fed up with the
expectation that women tolerate male misconduct (her husband’s sup-
posed cheating), not unlike the wife fed up with secondhand smoke in the
Aster-Churchill story.
While the trope of the villainous poisoner is, and remains, prominent
throughout culture, poison’s precarious identity means that poison can-
not be defined by one quality or one point of view. Because strongly asso-
ciated with women, domestic poisoning may reflect particularly upon

14
Nineteenth-century poisoning trials continue to appear in popular culture in the Golden
Age of Detective Fiction between the world wars, as in Strong Poison where the detective
reads up on the cases of Palmer, Pritchard, Smith, and Maybrick. Recent films and mini-series
still cover these notorious figures, as in Dark Angel (2016), which tells the story of poisoner
Mary Ann Cotton, who is dubbed Britain’s first female serial killer.
15
Lacey (2008) concludes that eighteenth-century female rogues, like Defoe’s exuberant
thief Moll Flanders, are replaced by passive criminals, like the put-upon Tess of the
D’Urbervilles, not because nineteenth-century women were less active but because social
expectations regarding female behavior were stricter (6).
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 11

gender and class expectations, sometimes even reversing the usual norms.
It may also reflect changing notions of how the world works, for example,
whether by Providence or by science. It might be used to prove that
women were weaker vessels spiritually (like Eve) or evolutionarily (accord-
ing to Lombroso), or it might actually prove women’s power and courage
in unfair circumstances (as in Valerie de Marolles or Camma). Readers may
delight in stories of poisoning because of its thrilling rejection of everyday
behavior, not unlike the pleasurable thrill of eating fugu. In “The Decline
of the English Murder,” George Orwell (1946/2019) saucily locates the
great period of English murder from 1850 to 1925 and lists nine particu-
larly juicy cases, of which six are poisonings.16 These murders, Orwell
(1946/2019) argues, had all the right elements for middle-class reading
enjoyment: middle-class criminals, romantic motives, domestic settings,
and dramatic coincidences. By the end of the century, new kinds of writing
were blending these elements with poison to address new issues in mascu-
linity, femininity, and domesticity in the emerging genre of the detec-
tive story.

Agatha Christie, Detection, and Poison

Many words spring to mind when considering Dame Agatha Christie, per-
haps, prolific (she wrote over 80 major works) and best-selling (her book
jackets boast over a billion copies sold). She was so prolific and so best-­
selling that even the Doctor in Doctor Who carries a copy of Agatha Christie
in the TARDIS, a copy printed in the year five billion.17 The word puzzle
may also spring to mind, because Christie’s puzzle plots are famous for
their ingenuity. Prolific, best-selling, and puzzle may be words of praise, but
they can prove troublesome in the world of literary criticism. Alistair Rolls
and Jesper Guldal (2016) suggest that Christie may be a “victim of her

16
Orwell (1946/2019) lists the following poisoners: Palmer, Cream, Maybrick, Crippen,
Seddon, and Armstrong. The non-poisoners are Jack the Ripper, George Smith (who
drowned his wives), and Bywaters and Thompson (who stabbed her husband). Lucy Worsley
(2014) also dates the modern pleasure in a good murder to the Victorian era. Judith
R. Walkowitz (1992) connects the Victorian interest in crime to the burgeoning press cover-
age of cases such as Jack the Ripper.
17
The episode of Doctor Who starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate is “The Unicorn
and the Wasp” (Series 4, episode 7) in which a young Agatha Christie solves a series of mur-
ders in an isolated manor house after which she mysteriously disappears for 10 days. Where
is she? In the TARDIS, obviously.
12 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

own success,” a figure so familiar that we forget that she may have been
more than an affable, gray-haired dame writing formulaic whodunits (5).
In his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler (1950)
sneers at cozy, English detective stories set at “cheesecake manor” and
praises the hard-boiled gumshoes who cheat death on the mean streets of
urban America. He calls all English detective writers, and Christie particu-
larly, the “best dull writers” in the world. What Chandler and other critics
overlook, however, is that the word one should associate with Christie is
not cheesecake but poison.
Poison is Agatha Christie’s favorite murder weapon, and her works are
an encyclopedia of poisoning types, tropes, and meanings. A Christie poi-
son might be leaves picked from the garden, eyedrops from the medicine
cabinet, injections from the doctor’s bag, or pesticide from the shed. It
can be in the salad, in the tea, on a bandage, or in the shaving lotion. Her
poisoners range from villainous poisoners to witch-like poisoners to
physician-­poisoners to accidental poisoners to avenging poisoners. Because
of her work as a dispensary assistant during World War I, Christie was
keenly aware of poison’s hard-to-pin-down identity. As she reflects in her
autobiography, dispensing assistant Christie (1977/2010) had a “nervous
horror” of making a mistake that would turn the patients’ helpful medi-
cine into deadly poison (250). She describes rushing back to work one day
“worried to death” after realizing a possible mistake, and she recounts the
experience of a friend whose grandchild was overdosed with opium
through a chemist’s error, although the child luckily recovered (251).
This sense of poison as a precarious substance shaped her approach to
detective writing, so much so that Christie finds the seed of her first novel,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), in a pharmaceutical problem that
commonly appeared on dispensary-assistant exams: “Since I was sur-
rounded by poisons, perhaps it was natural that death by poisoning should
be the method I selected. I settled on one fact which seemed to me to have
possibilities. I toyed with the idea, liked it, and finally accepted it” (254).
The novel developed not around the detective—a Belgian war refugee
named Hercule Poirot—but around the fact that strychnine is particularly
liable to a specific dispensing error.18 In this first novel, Christie’s poisoner
draws upon two strands of poisoning stories: the jealous and deceitful
poisoner as in the Queen in “Little Snow White” and the corrupt medical
poisoner. A self-proclaimed detective story addict, W.H. Auden (1948)

18
For more on this error and its effects, see Roth (2015). The error is a spoiler.
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 13

imputes the pleasure of reading a detective story to the tidy endings of

stories like The Mysterious Affair at Styles that satisfactorily find the guilty,
remove the guilty from society, and restore social innocence. But Christie’s
depiction of poison embraces not only this tidy narrative but poison’s
more subversive aspects.
Two strands of criticism are particularly relevant when exploring poi-
soning in Agatha Christie’s work. The first strand relates to gameplaying.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”—one of the earliest modern
detective stories—the dastardly blackmailer and the ultrarational detective
C. Auguste Dupin engage in a spirited game of one-upmanship with the
stolen letter going to the cleverest man. The game is also afoot in Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, where Holmes pits his logic
against master criminals such as Professor Moriarty, Irene Adler, and
Charles Augustus Milverton. On a lighter note, friendly one-upmanship
drives Watson’s desire to beat Holmes at games of observation and rea-
soning, a feat Watson never quite manages. But games are not limited to
the page. As Earl Bargainnier (1980) aptly states, “if detective fiction is a
game, …the real intellectual activity is between the author and the reader”
(8).19 By the early twentieth century, the detective story developed the
concept of “fair play” in which readers are presented with clues as soon as
the fictional detective encounters them, enabling the reader-as-detective
to solve the crime independently. As defined by writer-art critic S.S. Van
Dine and by writer-priest Ronald Knox, these stories, aptly named clue-­
puzzles by critic Stephen Knight (2004), must also avoid coincidences,
magical solutions, intuition, secret twins, secret passages, and unknown
poisons as violations of fair play.20 Kathryn Harkup (2015) points out that
Christie always played fair with her poisons: they are usually accurately
represented in terms of their route of administration, effects on the body,
and timeline (15). In addition, Christie often used common features of
the clue-puzzle genre: an enclosed setting, an upper-middle class social
milieu, and a strictly amateur cast of characters, often repeating favorite

19
For more on the reader-as-detective game, see Hühn (1987), Lehman (1989). Bayard
(2000) problematizes the very notion of reading as detection.
20
Christie was also a member of the Detection Club, whose oath swore to avoid “Divine
Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of
God” (Harkup 2015, 15). Harkup (2015) also notes that Christie broke many of the
accepted rules, creating a stir with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in particular (14). Earl
F. Bargainnier (1980) notes that Christie breaks 15 of Van Dine’s 20 rules for detective fic-
tion writing and seven of Knox’s ten commandments (6).
14 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

character types, ploys, and plot twists (Knight 2004, 87; Bargainnier
1980, 124). As Chandler unhappily noted, no professional hitmen or
mobsters need apply. As players in a game, Christie’s readers are not
“unduly disturbed” by the murder, the culprit’s motives, or the bystand-
ers’ reactions, most of the bystanders serving only functional purposes as
potential suspects, sources of information, or comic relief (Bargainnier
1980, 113, 131).21 In this, Christie’s poisoning stories work within the
mainstream of the clue-puzzle genre, both in terms of her poisons and of
playing fair with readers.
On the other hand, Christie occasionally engages in a spot of rule-­
breaking. For example, some of her culprits escape justice and defy the
genre’s usually tidy closure (Bargainnier 1980, 130). Her well-known ten-
dency to create unpleasant victims, sympathetic culprits, and even guilty
detectives disrupts the clue-puzzle expectation that the reader-as-detective
will solve the puzzle without becoming emotionally involved (Bernthal
2009, 33; Hark 1997, 112; Woods 1997, 107). In response, many readers
reject the reader-as-detective role entirely and reread favorite stories know-
ing the outcome (Knight 2004, 89). Mary S. Wagoner (1986) suggests
that Christie encourages subversive reading practices by deliberately reus-
ing familiar plot devices and characters in order to prompt readers to
reconsider social problems from different angles (37). In this kind of read-
ing, the detective story becomes less a formula than “a dialectic between
familiarity and novelty that writers know readers are looking for” (Horsley
2005, 5). What matters is not the formula itself but readers’ knowledge of
the formula because “difference accounts for the larger part of the reader’s
enjoyment” (Horsley 2005, 16). Christie knows that we know her familiar
moves. We know she knows we know, so we are wary when we recognize
these moves. But she knows we know she knows we know, and she remains
one step ahead of us. In these moments, Christie offers readers not the
goody-goody game of solving the puzzle but a more complex game that
reaches out beyond the tidy puzzle plot into her other stories, into other
detective fiction, and into the wider culture. Instead of the pleasure of
expelling danger, as Auden suggests, this kind of reading offers the plea-
surable sense that there is danger always lurking beneath the placid rou-
tines of daily life (Knight 2004, 92; Horsley 2005, 20, 41). Considering

21
Gillian Gill (1990) highlights Christie’s innovative gameplaying, particularly through
her inclusion of women and elderly people in the formerly male-dominated detective-cul-
prit game.
 1 AGATHA CHRISTIE, POISON, AND CRIME 15

this, Christie’s repeated depictions of poisoning may not merely be adher-

ence to a well-worn formula but her attempt to revisit the dynamics of
poisoning from various perspectives, including ones usually excluded from
mainstream clue-puzzles.
The second strand of criticism invites us to consider the implications of
Christie’s rule-breaking on gender and domesticity, two themes that often
recur in her work. In her landmark study, Alison Light (1991) argues that
Christie simultaneously rejects the melodrama of late Victorian detective
fiction and its accompanying gender stereotypes, both the militaristic mas-
culinity and angel-in-the-house femininity (9). In doing so, Christie’s
work offered readers a respite from an earnest Victorianism out of step
with a post-World War I world in need of recuperation (Light 1991, 86,
105). Instead, Christie offered readers a conservative progressivism, a
“kind of licensed terror like those of the funfair ride, staying firmly on the
rails and never going over the edge” (Light 1991, 100). Going a step
further, Kimberly J. Dilley (1998) asserts that mass-market detective fic-
tion may not merely seem to be doing something dangerous (like a funfair
ride) but actually be “a fertile venue for women’s discussions about their
own lives and their place in a society where gender prescribes behavior,
expectations, and limitations” (xix).22 Mainstream detective fiction may
repurpose traditional tropes for subversive ends, not unlike the punk
movement’s repurposing of everyday zippers and safety pins into anti-­
mainstream fashion statements (Dilley 1998, 145). Similarly, Gill Plain
(2001) argues that mass-market detective fiction has subversive potential,
if readers set aside the conservative ending and focus on the subversive
middle, a way of reading we know Christie encourages because of her rule-­
breaking games (6). While most of these studies examine detectives,

22
Knepper (1983) also sees Christie as representing women coping with patriarchal sup-
pression including economic, physical, and psychological effects—arguing that her depiction
of these problems marks her as a writer with feminist aspects. Sally Munt (1994) calls atten-
tion to gaps in the masculinist detective genre created by feminized heroes, collaborative
guilt, and open endings, although she places these critiques of traditional gender in 1980s’
crime fiction. Maureen Reddy 1988 also finds “strong women” detectives later in the cen-
tury, although she considers Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night (1935) the first feminist detec-
tive novel (12). Reddy contends that Miss Marple has feminist elements due to the subversive
presentation of stereotypical female behaviors such as gossip, although Miss Marple is written
so as not to disturb the patriarchal structure of the text (20). In her introductory essay, Julie
H. Kim (2012) rejects the notion that Miss Marple or any Christie work has feminist poten-
tial akin to that of the 1980s, an era, she argues, freed from Christie’s stagnating influ-
ence (2).
16 S. A. PAMBOUKIAN

Odette L’Henry Evans (1994) foregrounds Christie’s capable and sympa-

thetic female criminals as the site of Christie’s engagement with gender
norms (177).23 In her brilliant study of fictional and nonfictional crime in
the Golden Age of Detection, Merja Makinen (2006) suggests that
Christie offers readers some “gloriously subversive female villains who dis-
rupt conventional textual and cultural expectations” (118). She argues,
“Christie’s strength lies in depicting a whole range and diversity of femi-
ninities and masculinities that form workable relationships. Some female
characters inhabit culturally construed ‘feminine’ behavior, some ‘mascu-
line’; and so do the male characters” (Makinen 2006, 111). Unlike some
of her contemporaries, Christie may depict female offenders as criminal,
even wicked, but “in a way that refuses to either demonise [sic] them for
their rejection of gender stereotypes or to negate their agency and thus
their power to disrupt society” (Makinen 2006, 135). In depicting some
female poisoners as sympathetic, active, and reasonable, Christie is not
only toying with the genre’s conventions but challenging gender norms
and cultural stereotypes, albeit in fiction.
In works such as The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie depicts a poi-
soning that fits within the satisfying pattern of clue-puzzle detection, but
in other works, Christie deviates from this pattern and, in doing so, poten-
tially offers readers different views of poisoning and poisoners that subvert
our expectations about masculinity, femininity, domesticity, and justice, if
only momentarily. In these stories, wronged lovers may poison philander-
ers usually forgiven in mainstream society, reformed prisoners may poison
rather than submit to an unjust justice system, and bereaved mothers may
poison to revenge selfish behavior usually accepted in everyday life.
However, even when voicing points of view usually suppressed by main-
stream society, poisoners are still wrongdoers. To cope with this contradic-
tion, writers may embed the sympathetic moment in the middle of the text
then return to the mainstream point of view in a conventionally tidy end-
ing. Yet, there is another kind of literature that copes with this contradic-
tion by openly indulging the pleasures of reading about wrongdoing:
outlaw literature. Far from mere criminals, outlaws are cheered by readers
as champions of justice and fair play despite mainstream justice’s condem-
nation of them. Usually, outlaw texts are considered separately from either
poisoner or detective stories, but in both poisoning and detective stories

23
Hoffman (2016) argues that Christie’s female criminals avoid stereotypes of femininity
and recuperate marginalized women, often problematizing villain and victim.
Another random document with
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say? You know I don’t speak English very well.”
“Oh, yes!” answered Lady Jane; “I know what you say, and I like
you.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Pepsie brightly, “because I’ve been just
crazy to have you come over here. Now tell me, is Madame Jozain
your aunt or your grandma?”
“Why, she’s my Tante Pauline; that’s all,” replied the child
indifferently.
“Do you love her dearly?” asked Pepsie, who was something of a
little diplomat.
“No, I don’t love her,” said Lady Jane decidedly.
“Oh my! Why, isn’t she good to you?”
Lady Jane made no reply, but looked wistfully at Pepsie, as if she
would rather not express her opinion on the subject.
“Well, never mind. I guess she’s kind to you, only perhaps you
miss your ma. Has she gone away?” And Pepsie lowered her voice
and spoke very softly; she felt that she was treading on delicate
ground, but she so wanted to know all about the dear little thing, not
so much from curiosity as from the interest she felt in her.
Lady Jane did not reply, and Pepsie again asked very gently:
“Has your mama gone away?”
“Tante Pauline says so,” replied the child, as the woe-begone
expression settled on her little face again. “She says mama’s gone
away, and that she’ll come back. I think she’s gone to heaven to see
papa. You know papa went to heaven before we left the ranch—and
mama got tired waiting for him to come back, and so she’s gone to
see him; but I wish she’d taken me with her. I want to see papa too,
and I don’t like to wait so long.”
The soft, serious little voice fell to a sigh, and she looked solemnly
out of the window at the strip of sunset sky over Madame Jozain’s
house.
 Pepsie’s great eyes filled with tears, and she turned away her
head to hide them.
“Heaven’s somewhere up there, isn’t it?” she continued, pointing
upward. “Every night when the stars come out, I watch to see if papa
and mama are looking at me. I think they like to stay up there, and
don’t want to come back, and perhaps they’ve forgotten all about
Lady Jane.”
“Lady Jane, is that your name? Why, how pretty!” said Pepsie,
trying to speak brightly; “and what a little darling you are! I don’t think
any one would ever forget you, much less your papa and mama.
Don’t get tired waiting; you’re sure to see them again, and you
needn’t to be lonesome, sitting there on the gallery every day alone.
While your aunt’s busy with her customers, you can come over here
with your bird, and sit with me. I’ll show you how to shell pecans and
sugar them, and I’ll read some pretty stories to you. And oh, I’ll teach
you to play solitaire.”
“What is solitaire?” asked Lady Jane, brightening visibly.
“It’s a game of cards,” and Pepsie nodded toward the table; “I was
playing when you came. It’s very amusing. Now tell me about your
bird. Where did you get him?”
“A boy gave him to me—a nice boy. It was on the cars, and mama
said I could have him; that was before mama’s dear head ached so.
It ached so, she couldn’t speak afterward.”
“And haven’t you a doll?” interrupted Pepsie, seeing that the child
was approaching dangerous ground.
“A doll? Oh yes, I’ve got ever so many at the ranch; but I haven’t
any here. Tante Pauline promised me one, but she hasn’t got it yet.”
“Well, never mind; I’ll make you one; I make lovely dolls for my
little cousins, the Paichoux. I must tell you about the Paichoux. There
is Uncle Paichoux, and Tante Modeste, and Marie, the eldest,—she
has taken her first communion, and goes to balls,—and then there is
Tiburce, a big boy, and Sophie and Nanette, and a lot of little ones,
all good, pleasant children, so healthy and so happy. Uncle Paichoux
is a dairyman; they live on Frenchman Street, way, way down where
it is like the country, and they have a big house, a great deal larger
than any house in this neighborhood, with a garden, and figs and
peaches, and lovely pomegranates that burst open when they are
ripe, and Marie has roses and crape myrtle and jasmine. It is lovely
there—just lovely. I went there once, long ago, before my back hurt
me so much.”
“Does your back hurt you now?” interrupted Lady Jane, diverted
from the charming description of the Paichoux home by sudden
sympathy for the speaker.
“Yes, sometimes; you see how crooked it is. It’s all grown out, and
I can’t bear to be jolted; that’s why I never go anywhere; besides, I
can’t walk,” added Pepsie, feeling a secret satisfaction in
enumerating her ills. “But it’s my back; my back’s the worst.”
“What ails it?” asked Lady Jane, with the deepest sympathy in her
grave little voice.
“I’ve got a spine in my back, and the doctor says I’ll never get over
it. It’s something when you once get it that you can’t be cured of, and
it’s mighty bad; but I’ve got used to it now,” and she smiled at Lady
Jane; a smile full of patience and resignation. “I wasn’t always so
bad,” she went on cheerfully, “before papa died. You see papa was a
fireman, and he was killed in a fire when I was very small; but before
that he used to take me out in his arms, and sometimes I used to go
out in Tante Modeste’s milk-cart—such a pretty cart, painted red, and
set up on two high wheels, and in front there are two great cans, as
tall as you are, and they shine like silver, and little measures hang on
the spouts where the milk comes out, and over the seat is a top just
like a buggy top, which they put up when the sun is too hot, or it
rains. Oh, it’s just beautiful to sit up on that high seat, and go like the
wind! I remember how it felt on my face,” and Pepsie leaned back
and closed her eyes in ecstasy, “and then the milk! When I was
thirsty, Tante Modeste would give me a cup of milk out of the big can,
and it was so sweet and fresh. Some day I’m sure she’ll take you,
and then you’ll know how it all was; but I don’t think I shall ever go
again, because I can’t bear the jolting; and besides,” said Pepsie,
with a very broad smile of satisfaction, “I’m so well off here; I can see
everything, and everybody, so I don’t mind; and then I’ve been once,
and know just what it’s like to go fast with the wind in my face.”
“I used to ride on my pony with papa,” began Lady Jane, her
memory of the past awakened by the description of Pepsie’s drive.
“My pony was named Sunflower, now I remember,” and her little face
grew radiant, and her eyes sparkled with joy; “papa used to put me
on Sunflower, and mama was afraid I’d fall.” Then the brief glow
faded out of her face, for she heard Madame Jozain call across the
street, “Lady! Lady! Come, child, come. It’s nearly dark, and time you
were in bed.”
With touching docility, and without the least hesitation, she
gathered up Tony, who was standing on one leg under her chair,
and, holding up her face for Pepsie to kiss, she said good-by.
“And you’ll come again in the morning,” cried Pepsie, hugging her
fondly; “you’ll be sure to come in the morning.”
And Lady Jane said yes.
 CHAPTER X
LADY JANE FINDS OTHER FRIENDS

T HUS Lady Jane’s new life, in the quaint old Rue des Bons
Enfants, began under quite pleasant auspices. From the moment
that Pepsie, with a silent but not unrecorded vow, constituted herself
the champion and guardian angel of the lonely little stranger, she
was surrounded by friends, and hedged in with the most loyal
affection.
Because Pepsie loved the child, the good Madelon loved her also,
and although she saw her but seldom, being obliged to leave home
early and return late, she usually left her some substantial token of
good will, in the shape of cakes or pralines, or some odd little toy
that she picked up on Bourbon Street on her way to and from her
stand.
Madelon was a pleasant-faced, handsome woman, always clean
and always cheery; no matter how hard the day had been for her,
whether hot or cold, rainy or dusty, she returned home at night as
fresh and cheerful as when she went out in the morning. Pepsie
adored her mother, and no two human beings were ever happier
than they when the day’s work was over, and they sat down together
to their little supper.
Then Pepsie recounted to her mother everything that had
happened during the day, or at least everything that had come within
her line of vision as she sat at her window; and Madelon in turn
would tell her of all she had heard out in her world, the world of the
Rue Bourbon, and after the advent of Lady Jane the child was a
constant theme of conversation between them. Her beauty, her
intelligence, her pretty manners, her charming little ways were a
continual wonder to the homely woman and girl, who had seen little
beyond their own sphere of life.
 If Madelon was fortunate enough to get home early, she always
found Lady Jane with Pepsie, and the loving way with which the child
would spring to meet her, clinging to her neck and nestling to her
broad motherly bosom, showed how deeply she needed the
maternal affection so freely lavished upon her.
At first Madame Jozain affected to be a little averse to such a
close intimacy, and even went so far as to say to Madame
Fernandez, the tobacconist’s wife, who sat all day with her husband
in his little shop rolling cigarettes and selling lottery tickets, that she
did not like her niece to be much with the lame girl opposite, whose
mother was called “Bonne Praline.” Perhaps they were honest
people, and would do the child no harm; but a woman who was
never called madame, and who sat all day on the Rue Bourbon, was
likely to have the manners of the streets. And Lady Jane had never
been thrown with such people; she had been raised very carefully,
and she didn’t want her to lose her pretty manners.
Madame Fernandez agreed that Madelon was not over-refined,
and that Pepsie lacked the accomplishments of a young lady. “But
they are very honest,” she said, “and the girl has a generous heart,
and is so patient and cheerful; besides, Madelon has a sister who is
rich. Monsieur Paichoux, her sister’s husband, is very well off, a solid
man, with a large dairy business; and their daughter Marie, who just
graduated at the Sacred Heart, is very pretty, and is fiancée to a
young man of superior family, a son of Judge Guiot, and you know
who the Guiots are.”
Yes, madame knew. Her father, Pierre Bergeron, and Judge Guiot
had always been friends, and the families had visited in other days. If
that was the case, the Paichoux must be very respectable; and if
“Bonne Praline” was the sister-in-law of a Paichoux, and prospective
aunt-in-law to the son of a judge, there was no reason why she
should keep the child away; therefore she allowed her to go
whenever she wished, which was from the time she was out of bed
in the morning until it was quite dark at night.
Lady Jane shared Pepsie’s meals, and sat at the table with her,
learning to crack and shell pecans with such wonderful facility that
Pepsie’s task was accomplished some hours sooner, therefore she
had a good deal of time each day to devote to her little friend. And it
was very amusing to witness Pepsie’s motherly care for the child.
She bathed her, and brushed her long silken hair; she trimmed her
bang to the most becoming length; she dressed her with the greatest
taste, and tied her sash with the chic of a French milliner; she
examined the little pink nails and pearls of teeth to see if they were
perfectly clean, and she joined with Lady Jane in rebelling against
madame’s decree that the child should go barefoot while the weather
was warm. “All the little creoles did, and she was not going to buy
shoes for the child to knock out every day.” Therefore, when her
shoes were worn, Madelon bought her a neat little pair on the Rue
Bourbon, and Pepsie darned her stockings and sewed on buttons
and strings with the most exemplary patience. When madame
complained that, with all the business she had to attend to, the white
frocks were too much trouble and expense to keep clean, Tite
Souris, who was a fair laundress, begged that she might be allowed
to wash them, which she did with such good-will that Lady Jane was
always neat and dainty.
Gradually the sorrowful, neglected look disappeared from her
small face, and she became rosy and dimpled again, and as
contented and happy a child as ever was seen in Good Children
Street. Every one in the neighborhood knew her; the gracious,
beautiful little creature, with her blue heron, became one of the
sights of the quarter. She was a picture and a poem in one to the
homely, good-natured creoles, and everywhere she went she carried
sunshine with her.
Little Gex, a tiny, shrunken, bent Frenchman, who kept a small
fruit and vegetable stall just above Madelon’s, felt that the day had
been dark indeed when Lady Jane’s radiant little face did not illumine
his dingy quarters. How his old, dull eyes would brighten when he
heard her cheery voice, “Good morning, Mr. Gex; Tante Pauline”—or
Pepsie, as the case might be—“would like a nickel of apples, onions,
or carrots”; and the orange that was always given her for lagniappe
was received with a charming smile, and a “Thank you,” that went
straight to the old, withered heart.
 Gex was a quiet, polite little man, who seldom held any
conversation with his customers beyond the simple requirements of
his business; and children, as a general thing, he detested, for the
reason that the ill-bred little imps in the neighborhood made him the
butt of their mischievous ridicule, for his appearance was droll in the
extreme: his small face was destitute of beard and as wrinkled as a
withered apple, and he usually wore a red handkerchief tied over his
bald head with the ends hanging under his chin; his dress consisted
of rather short and very wide trousers, a little jacket, and an apron
that reached nearly to his feet. This very quaint costume gave him a
nondescript appearance, which excited the mirth of the juvenile
population to such a degree that they did not always restrain it within
proper bounds. Therefore it was very seldom that a child entered his
den, and such a thing as one receiving lagniappe was quite unheard
of.
MR. GEX AT THE DOOR OF HIS SHOP
 All day long he sat on his small wooden chair behind the shelf
across his window, on which was laid in neat piles oranges, apples,
sweet potatoes, onions, cabbages, and even the odorous garlic; they
were always sound and clean, and for that reason, even if he did not
give lagniappe to small customers, he had a fair trade in the
neighborhood. And he was very neat and industrious. When he was
not engaged in preparing his vegetables, he was always tinkering at
something of interest to himself; he could mend china and glass,
clocks and jewelry, shoes and shirts; he washed and patched his
own wardrobe, and darned his own stockings. Often when a
customer came in he would push his spectacles upon his forehead,
lay down his stocking and needle, and deal out his cabbage and
carrots as unconcernedly as if he had been engaged in a more
manly occupation.
From some of the dingy corners of his den he had unearthed an
old chair, very stiff and high, and entirely destitute of a bottom; this
he cleaned and repaired by nailing across the frame an orange-box
cover decorated with a very bright picture, and one day he charmed
Lady Jane by asking her to sit down and eat her orange while he
mended his jacket.
She declined eating her orange, as she always shared it with
Pepsie, but accepted the invitation to be seated. Placing Tony to
forage on a basket of refuse vegetables, she climbed into the chair,
placed her little heels on the topmost rung, smoothed down her short
skirt, and, resting her elbows on her knees, leaned her rosy little
cheeks on her palms, and set herself to studying Gex seriously and
critically. At length, her curiosity overcoming her diffidence, she said
in a very polite tone, but with a little hesitation: “Mr. Gex, are you a
man or a woman?”
Gex, for the moment, was fairly startled out of himself, and,
perhaps for the first time in years, he threw back his head and
laughed heartily.
“Bon! bon! ’Tis good; ’tis vairy good. Vhy, my leetle lady, sometime
I don’t know myself; ’cause, you see, I have to be both the man and
the voman; but vhy in the vorld did you just ask me such a funny
question?”
“Because, Mr. Gex,” replied Lady Jane, very gravely, “I’ve thought
about it often. Because—men don’t sew, and wear aprons,—and—
women don’t wear trousers; so, you see, I couldn’t tell which you
were.”
“Oh, my foi!” and again Gex roared with laughter until a neighbor,
who was passing, thought he had gone crazy, and stopped to look at
him with wonder; but she only saw him leaning back, laughing with
all his might, while Lady Jane sat looking at him with a frowning,
flushed face, as if she was disgusted at his levity.
“I don’t know why you laugh so,” she said loftily, straightening up in
her chair, and regarding Gex as if he had disappointed her. “I think
it’s very bad for you to have no one to mend your clothes, and—and
to have to sew like a woman, if—if you’re a man.”
“Vhy, bless your leetle heart, so it is; but you see I am just one
poor, lonely creature, and it don’t make much difference vhether I’m
one or t’ other; nobody cares now.”
“I do,” returned Lady Jane brightly; “and I’m glad I know, because,
when Pepsie teaches me to sew, I’m going to mend your clothes, Mr.
Gex.”
“Vell, you are one leetle angel,” exclaimed Gex, quite overcome.
“Here, take another orange.”
“Oh, no; thank you. I’ve only bought one thing, and I can’t take two
lagniappes; that would be wrong. But I must go now.”
And, jumping down, she took Tony from his comfortable nest
among the cabbage-leaves, and with a polite good-by she darted
out, leaving the dingy little shop darker for her going.
For a long time after she went Gex sat looking thoughtfully at his
needlework. Then he sighed heavily, and muttered to himself: “If
Marie had lived! If she’d lived, I’d been more of a man.”
 CHAPTER XI
THE VISIT TO THE PAICHOUX

O NE bright morning in October, while Pepsie and Lady Jane

were very busy over their pecans, there was a sudden rattling
of wheels and jingling of cans, and Tante Modeste’s milk-cart, gay in
a fresh coat of red paint, with the shining cans, and smart little mule
in a bright harness, drew up before the door, and Tante Modeste
herself jumped briskly down from the high seat, and entered like a
fresh breath of spring.
She and Madelon were twin sisters, and very much alike; the
same large, fair face, the same smooth, dark hair combed straight
back from the forehead, and twisted in a glossy knot at the back, and
like Madelon she wore a stiffly starched, light calico gown, finished at
the neck with a muslin scarf tied in a large bow; her head was bare,
and in her ears she wore gold hoops, and around her neck was a
heavy chain of the same precious metal.
When Pepsie saw her she held out her arms, flushing with
pleasure, and cried joyfully: “Oh, Tante Modeste, how glad I am! I
thought you’d forgotten to come for Lady Jane.”
Tante Modeste embraced her niece warmly, and then caught Lady
Jane to her heart just as Madelon did. “Forgotten her? Oh, no; I’ve
thought of her all the time since I was here; but I’ve been so busy.”
“What about, Tante Modeste?” asked Pepsie eagerly.
“Oh, you can’t think how your cousin Marie is turning us upside
down, since she decided to be a lady.” Here Tante Modeste made a
little grimace of disdain. “She must have our house changed, and her
papa can’t say ‘no’ to her. I like it best as it was, but Marie must have
paint and carpets; think of it—carpets! But I draw the line at the
parlor—the salon,” and again Tante Modeste shrugged and laughed.
“She wants a salon; well, she shall have a salon just as she likes it,
and I will have the other part of the house as I like it. Just imagine,
your uncle has gone on Rue Royale, and bought a mirror, a console,
a cabinet, a sofa, and a carpet.”
“Oh, oh, Tante Modeste, how lovely!” cried Pepsie, clasping her
hands in admiration. “I wish I could see the parlor just once.”
“You shall, my dear; you shall, if you have to be brought on a bed.
When there’s a wedding,”—and she nodded brightly, as much as to
say, “and there will be one soon,”—“you shall be brought there. I’ll
arrange it so you can come comfortably, my dear. Have patience,
you shall come.”
“How good you are, Tante Modeste,” cried Pepsie, enraptured at
the promise of such happiness.
“But now, chérie,” she said, turning to Lady Jane, whose little face
was expressing in pantomime her pleasure at Pepsie’s delight, “I’ve
come for you this morning to take you a ride in the cart, as I
promised.”
“Tante Pauline doesn’t know,” began Lady Jane dutifully. “I must
go and ask her if I can.”
“I’ll send Tite,” cried Pepsie, eager to have the child enjoy what to
her seemed the greatest pleasure on earth.
“Here, Tite,” she said, as the black visage appeared at the door.
“Run quick across to Madame Jozain, and ask if Miss Lady can go to
ride in the milk-cart with Madame Paichoux; and bring me a clean
frock and her hat and sash.”
Tite flew like the wind, her black legs making zigzag strokes
across the street, while Pepsie brushed the child’s beautiful hair until
it shone like gold.
Madame Jozain did not object. Of course, a milk-cart wasn’t a
carriage, but then Lady Jane was only a child, and it didn’t matter.
While Pepsie was putting the finishing touches to Lady Jane’s
toilet, Tante Modeste and Tite Souris were busy bringing various
packages from the milk-cart to the little room; butter, cream, cheese,
sausage, a piece of pig, and a fine capon. When Tante Modeste
came, she always left a substantial proof of her visit.
There was only one drawback to Lady Jane’s joy, and that was the
necessity of leaving Tony behind.
“You might take him,” said Tante Modeste, good-naturedly, “but
there are so many young ones home they’d pester the bird about to
death, and something might happen to him; he might get away, and
then you’d never forgive us.”
“I know I mustn’t take him,” said Lady Jane, with sweet
resignation. “Dear Tony, be a good bird while I’m gone, and you shall
have some bugs to-morrow.” Tony was something of an epicure, and
“bugs,” as Lady Jane called them, extracted from cabbage-leaves,
were a delight to him. Then she embraced him fondly, and fastened
him securely to Pepsie’s chair, and went away with many good-bys
and kisses for her friend and not a few lingering glances for her pet.
It was a perfectly enchanting situation to Lady Jane when she was
mounted up on the high seat, close under Tante Modeste’s
sheltering wing, with her little feet on the cream-cheese box, and the
two tall cans standing in front like sturdy tin footmen waiting for
orders. Then Tante Modeste pulled the top up over their heads and
shook her lines at the fat little mule, and away they clattered down
Good Children Street, with all the children and all the dogs running
on behind.
It was a long and delightful drive to Lady Jane before they got out
of town to where the cottages were scattered and set in broad fields,
with trees and pretty gardens. At length they turned out of the
beautiful Esplanade, with its shady rows of trees, into Frenchman
Street, and away down the river they stopped before a large double
cottage that stood well back from the street, surrounded by trees and
flowers; a good-natured, healthy-looking boy threw open the gate,
and Tante Modeste clattered into the yard, calling out:
“Here, Tiburce, quick, my boy; unhitch the mule, and turn him out.”
The little animal understood perfectly well what she said, and
shaking his long ears he nickered approvingly.
 Lady Jane was lifted down from her high perch by Paichoux
himself, who gave her a right cordial welcome, and in a moment she
was surrounded by Tante Modeste’s good-natured brood. At first she
felt a little shy, there were so many, and they were such noisy
children; but they were so kind and friendly toward her that they soon
won her confidence and affection.
That day was a “red-letter day” to Lady Jane; she was introduced
to all the pets of the farm-yard, the poultry, the dogs, the kittens, the
calves, the ponies, and little colts, and the great soft motherly looking
cows that stood quietly in rows to be milked; and afterward they
played under the trees in the grass, while they gathered roses by the
armful to carry to Pepsie, and filled a basket with pecans for
Madelon.
She was feasted on gumbo, fried chicken, rice-cakes, and
delicious cream cheese until she could eat no more; she was
caressed and petted to her heart’s content from the pretty Marie
down to the smallest white-headed Paichoux; she saw the fine
parlor, the mirror, the pictures, the cabinet of shells, and the vases of
wax-flowers, and, to crown all, Paichoux himself lifted her on
Tiburce’s pony and rode her around the yard several times, while
Tante Modeste made her a beautiful cake, frosted like snow, with her
name in pink letters across the top.
At last, when the milk-cart came around with its evening load of
fresh milk for waiting customers, Lady Jane was lifted up again
beside Tante Modeste, overloaded with presents, caresses, and
good wishes, the happiest child, as well as the tiredest, that ever
rode in a milk-cart.
Long before they reached the noisy city streets, Lady Jane
became very silent, and Tante Modeste peeped under the broad hat
to see if she had fallen asleep; but no, the blue eyes were wide and
wistful, and the little face had lost its glow of happiness.
“Are you tired, chérie?” asked Tante Modeste kindly.
“No, thank you,” she replied, with a soft sigh. “I was thinking of
papa, and Sunflower, and the ranch, and dear mama. Oh, I wonder if
she’ll come back soon.”
Tante Modeste made no reply, but she fell to thinking too. There
was something strange about it all that she couldn’t understand.
The child’s remarks and Madame Jozain’s stories did not agree.
There was a mystery, and she meant to get at the bottom of it by
some means. And when Tante Modeste set out to accomplish a thing
she usually succeeded.
 CHAPTER XII
TANTE MODESTE’S SUSPICIONS

“P AICHOUX,” said Tante Modeste to her husband, that same

night, before the tired dairyman went to bed, “I’ve been
thinking of something all the evening.”
“Vraiment! I’m surprised,” returned Paichoux facetiously; “I didn’t
know you ever wasted time thinking.”
“I don’t usually,” went on Tante Modeste, ignoring her husband’s
little attempt at pleasantry; “but really, papa, this thing is running
through my head constantly. It’s about that little girl of Madame
Jozain’s; there’s something wrong about the ménage there. That
child is no more a Jozain than I am. A Jozain, indeed!—she’s a little
aristocrat, if ever there was one, a born little lady.”
“Perhaps she’s a Bergeron,” suggested Paichoux, with a quizzical
smile. “Madame prides herself on being a Bergeron, and the
Bergerons are fairly decent people. Old Bergeron, the baker, was an
honest man.”
“That may be; but she isn’t a Bergeron, either. That child is
different, you can see it. Look at her beside our young ones. Why,
she’s a swan among geese.”
“Well, that happens naturally sometimes,” said the philosophic
Paichoux. “I’ve seen it over and over in common breeds. It’s an
accident, but it happens. In a litter of curs, there’ll be often one
stylish dog; the puppies’ll grow up together; but there’ll be one
different from the others, and the handsomest one may not be the
smartest, but he’ll be the master, and get the best of everything. Now
look at that black filly of mine; where did she get her style? Not from
either father or mother. It’s an accident—an accident,—and it may be
with children as it is with puppies and colts, and that little one may be
an example of it.”
 “Nonsense, Paichoux!” said Tante Modeste sharply. “There’s no
accident about it; there’s a mystery, and Madame Jozain doesn’t tell
the truth when she talks about the child. I can feel it even when she
doesn’t contradict herself. The other day I stepped in there to buy
Marie a ribbon, and I spoke about the child! in fact, I asked which
side she came from, and madame answered very curtly that her
father was a Jozain. Now this is what set me to thinking: To-day,
when Pepsie was putting a clean frock on the child, I noticed that her
under-clothing was marked ‘J. C.’ Remember, ‘J. C.’ Well, the day
that I was in madame’s shop, she said to me in her smooth way that
she’d heard of Marie’s intended marriage, and that she had
something superior, exquisite, that she’d like to show me. Then she
took a box out of her armoire, and in it were a number of the most
beautiful sets of linen I ever saw, batiste as fine as cobwebs and real
lace. ‘They’re just what you need for mademoiselle,’ she said in her
wheedling tone; ‘since she’s going to marry into such a distinguished
family, you’ll want to give her the best.’
“‘They’re too fine for my daughter,’ I answered, as I turned them
over and examined them carefully. They were the handsomest
things!—and on every piece was a pretty little embroidered
monogram, J. C.; mind you, the same as the letters on the child’s
clothes. Then I asked her right out, for it’s no use mincing matters
with such a woman, where in the world she got such lovely linen.
“‘They belonged to my niece,’ she said, with a hypocritical sigh,
‘and I’d like to sell them; they’re no good to the child; before she’s
grown up they’ll be spoiled with damp and mildew; I’d rather have
the money to educate her.’
“‘But the monogram; it’s a pity they’re marked J. C.’ I repeated the
letters over to see what she would say, and as I live she was ready
for me.
“‘No, madame; it’s C. J.—Claire Jozain; her name was Claire,
you’re looking at it wrong, and really it don’t matter much how the
letters are placed, for they’re always misleading, you never know
which comes first; and, dear Madame Paichoux,’—she deared me,
and that made me still more suspicious,—‘don’t you see that the C
might easily be mistaken for G?—and no one will notice the J, it
looks so much like a part of the vine around it. I’ll make them a
bargain if you’ll take them.’
“I told her no, that they were too fine for my girl; par exemple! as if
I’d let Mariet wear stolen clothes, perhaps.”
“Hush, hush, Modeste!” exclaimed Paichoux; “you might get in the
courts for that.”
“Or get her there, which would be more to the purpose. I’d like to
know when and where that niece died, and who was with her;
besides, the child says such strange things, now and then, they set
one to thinking. To-day when I was taking her home, she began to
talk about the ranch, and her papa and mama. Sometimes I think
they’ve stolen her.”
“Oh, Modeste! The woman isn’t as bad as that; I’ve never heard
anything against her,” interrupted the peaceable Paichoux, “she’s got
a bad son, it’s true. That boy, Raste, is his father over again. Why, I
hear he’s already been in the courts; but she’s all right as far as I
know.”
“Well, we’ll see,” said Tante Modeste, oracularly; “but I’m not
satisfied about that monogram. It was J. C, as sure as I live, and not
C. J.”
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, mama,” said Paichoux, after some
deliberate thought; he was slow, but he was sure; “we’ll keep a
watch on the little one, and if anything happens, I’ll stand by her. You
tell sister Madelon to let me know if anything happens, and I’ll see
her through all right.”
“Then I believe she’s safe,” said Tante Modeste proudly, “for every
one knows that when Paichoux says a thing, he means it.”
If Madam Jozain had only known how unfavorable were the
comments of her supposed friends, she would not have felt as
comfortable as she did. Although she was riding on the topmost
wave of prosperity, as far as her business was concerned, she was
not, as I said before, entirely happy unless she had the good opinion
of every one, and for some reason, probably the result of a guilty
conscience, she fancied that people looked askance at her; for, in
spite of her polite advances, she had not succeeded in making
friends of her neighbors. They came to her shop to chat and look,
and sometimes to buy, and she was as civil to them as it was
possible to be. She gave them her most comfortable chairs, and
pulled down everything for them to examine, and unfolded, untied,
and unpacked, only to have the trouble of putting them all away
again. It was true they bought a good deal at times, and she had got
rid of many of “those things” in a quiet way, and at fair prices; but still
the neighbors kept her at a distance; they were polite enough, but
they were not cordial, and it was cordiality, warmth, admiration,
flattery, for which she hungered.
It was true she had a great deal to be proud of, for Raste was
growing handsomer and more of a gentleman every day. He was the
best looking fellow in the quarter, and he dressed so well,—like his
father, he was large and showy,—and wore the whitest linen, the
gayest neckties, and the finest jewelry, among which was the
beautiful watch of the dead woman. This watch he was fond of
showing to his friends, and pointing out the monogram, C. J., in
diamonds; for, like his mother, he found it easy to transpose the
letters to suit himself.
All this went a long way with Raste’s intimates, and made him very
popular among a certain class of young men who lived by their wits
and yet kept up a show of respectability.
And then, beside her satisfaction in Raste, there was the little Lady
Jane, to whom every door in the neighborhood was open. She was
the most beautiful and the most stylish child that ever was seen in
Good Children Street, and she attracted more attention than all the
other people put together. She never went out but what she heard
something flattering about the little darling, and she knew that a
great many people came to the shop just to get a glimpse of her.
All this satisfied her ambition, but not her vanity. She knew that
Lady Jane cared more for Pepsie, Madelon, or even little Gex, than
she did for her. The child was always dutiful, but never affectionate.
Sometimes a feeling of bitterness would stir within her, and, thinking