Paris in 1665: a mountebank hawks remedies before the Grand Châtelet, students roister, and in the back rooms of the apothecary Glazer the secret of slow poison passes into dangerous hands. Smith builds his tale around the real Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers, her lover Sainte-Croix and his creature Lachaussée, with a missing girl, Louise Gauthier, caught in their web.
A melodrama of the 1840s with illustrations by the Punch artist John Leech, for lovers of historical crime and old Paris. Download the free EPUB.