Free The Poisoning Angel by Jean Teulé Page A

journey came upon a woman shivering with fever at the roadside. He lifted her up on to his horse and carried her into the town. It was the plague. Thunderflower came over to Perrine again and, leaning in close to her, predicted the future: ‘You’re going to die, my girl.’
    In the room below, Dr Toursaint was absentmindedly reading the letter of recommendation the servant had brought, which was on the mantelshelf. There he read: ‘Hélène Jégado is an excellent cook and my one regret is that I cannot keep her until I die.’ Just then he heard a cry, piercing as a horn, through the ceiling. He rushed for the stairs and pushed open the door of the second bedroom to find Perrine dead in her bed, with the cover pulled up over her face.
    â€˜I’m more doubtful about medicine than I’ve ever been,’ he moaned, while Thunderflower went downstairs to the mother.
    On the staircase she half opened her lips, revealing small, bright white teeth, like those of a proverbial she-wolf.
    â€˜What was that cry that sent the doctor running, Hélène?’ asked Jeanne-Marie Leboucher, struggling to sit up in bed.
    â€˜It was your daughter who …’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Who.’
    For the mother in her current state, the shock was too great. There was nothing to stop her sinking into the abyss. Her maternal love stumbled through the burning of this hell and as her head fell back onto the pillow she grew radiant.
    â€˜Well then, let’s sleep the last sleep. God will take care of our awakening …’
    â€˜That’s it,’ said Thunderflower, encouragingly. ‘That’s what you have to say.’
    Next there was a long rattling noise in Jeanne-Marie Leboucher’s chest, before she turned her face to the wall and became motionless by the time the doctor arrived – too late.
    â€˜The lettuce water she was given, and the gomme syrup won’t have helped at all, then. Perhaps it was typhoid fever.’
    The cook got hold of a pitcher, blew out the candles and covered a bowl with a cloth, to Pierre-Charles Toursaint’s astonishment.
    â€˜What are you doing, Hélène?’
    â€˜When someone has breathed their last, you have to put out the candles while the soul passes, and also be careful that it doesn’t turn the milk or drown in the jug of water. Right, that’s done. I’m worn out. What I really need now is to go out for a pick-me-up.’
    Outside, under her lace-trimmed headdress, Thunderflower was walking behind a cart that had lost its cover, and whose charred and twisted metal hoops had suffered a fire. In front of the vehicle, each pulling one shaft, two Normans were complaining about the state of the Breton road, their accent ringing out: ‘All the Locminé roadsh need to be redone.’
    â€˜You can’t take one step after dark without risking a broken leg.’
    The cook looked at the rectangular bales wrapped in rough canvas, which lined the wagon she was following. Through the triangular tears at the corners of the pink fabric packages burst very unerotic-looking big black tufts of long, stinking Breton hair. Shaken about by the uneven road surface, in the light of a tavern from which laughter and singing could be heard they looked like rustic pubic hair dancing a
fest-noz
.
    The wigmakers continued along the narrow road, where the littler one’s shadow made a misshapen gnome on a wall, as, apropos of the lost cover, he had to concede, ‘Well, it’sh not raining, that’sh shomething.’
    â€˜It keeps the hair in better condition,’ the bald man agreed.
    Thunderflower went into the bar. From the dim street, through the lighted windows made up of little squares of coloured glass, a beautiful girl was visible – green eyes, blond curls escaping from her headdress, skin with a scent of vanilla and sex, and which must taste of it as well. The landlady came towards her. ‘What