The Poisoning Angel by Jean Teulé Page B

coffee?’
    ‘Yes, it’s new. A present from a former pupil of mine who is now the doctor at Hennebont.’
    ‘What does the plaque on the drawer say?’
    ‘The name of the man who invented it: Peugeot.’
    ‘You’re a teacher – show me how to write “Ankou”.’
    ‘What a strange notion. I’ll try to make the letters for you on this sheet of paper, even though my writing has changed beyond recognition. The ample strokes I used to make when my pen ran as freely as water at the mill have been reduced to painful scribblings. There you are, Madame. ANKOU.’
    ‘Ah, so it’s like that.’
    Thunderflower sat down on a high-backed bench. With the coffee grinder between her knees she poured a third of a packet in and slid the lid shut.
Clack!
As it closed, the servant’s mouth opened, and, turning the handle, she gave her judgement: ‘This is a better method than the old one, where I had to use a hammer to smash the beans wrapped in a cloth. Sometimes a few would escape and fall on the floor so you had to hunt for them if you wanted to grind them as well. It wasted time.’
    She listened with relish to the merciless cracking sounds of the machine’s internal workings, which ensured that not a single bean was spared.
    ‘Monsieur Kerallic, I’ve spent so much time at the bedsides of so many people, taking care of what needed doing to them.’
    ‘Are you a nurse as well?’
    ‘No, I wouldn’t go that far, but even in the time between leaving Pontivy and arriving here, I had three years in farms, inns, and bourgeois households, everywhere wiping the brows of people so racked by convulsions that they ended up as dust.’
    ‘Death in every place? You have to agree, Hélène, that’s a real catalogue of disasters.’
    ‘You could say that, couldn’t you, Monsieur Kerallic? I go into a house and everybody starts to vomit.’
    ‘Maybe they’d swallowed something harmful. Did no one suspect anything?’
    ‘You can’t tell what’s in a soup just by looking at it.’
    ‘What do they die of?’
    ‘Chest digestion, I expect.’
    ‘Chest digestion?’
    The servant’s Bretonisms and her Morbihan peasant accent amused the old teacher, who was looking closely at her in an enigmatic way, his eyes as gentle as two flowers on a heap of rubble.
    ‘You’ve seen a great deal of misfortune. No one could have such bad luck.’
    ‘I force myself to carry out my work.’
    ‘Yours is a sad profession.’
    Thunderflower went on turning the handle of the coffee grinder as she talked.
    ‘At all events, it’s not for the money that I go to this trouble. Besides, I’ve very often left households without getting my wages.’
    ‘Why? Were your employers poor?’
    ‘It’s not so much that but … as I told you … often when … left … they … weren’t al …’
    Words were missing from her mouth the way notes can be missing from a keyboard.
    ‘What can I do, Monsieur Kerallic? My weakness is growing too fond of people. But it’s true that I’ve seen the deaths of so many people caught up in my destiny. And it’s not over yet …’
    With her mind in disarray, she poured more roasted beans into the grinder while the old man grasped her meaning.
    ‘It’s the same with me: I didn’t become a teacher to grow rich. But when you feel a particular calling … And speaking of yours, I read in yesterday’s issue of
Le Conciliateur
that the Emperor Napoleon’s ashes are being returned to France. We owe him two million deaths.’
    ‘How many?’ asked the cook, stunned and suddenly humbled.
    ‘Two hundred thousand in Russia, forty thousand at Waterloo …’
    Thunderflower was dumbfounded. ‘I don’t know what he was cooking, but he did a hell of a job of it! I myself find the best thing for cakes is
reusenic’h
. It has a sweetish taste. At one point I thought of anti- … -coin? … -note?’
    ‘Antimony?’ the teacher suggested.
    ‘That’s it. But people would have noticed the taste of tainted silver and said to