Chapter 2: Addiction & Expansion

Robbed of her rose-colored dreams and furious her rival managed to get Mouray to the alter, despite her best efforts, you’d think Angele would set aside her stationary. But here’s the thing: Poison Pen Letters can become addictive to the sender. Every close call, near miss, and narrow escape from someone catching them in the act and possibly unmasking their identity is an adrenaline rush. Then there’s the pure exhilaration of owning a secret. The thrill of saying all the mean-spirited, vindictive, and spiteful things to people who’ve, in your eyes, slighted you. Not to mention the pleasure of watching your victim/victims react to your words and knowing you hold the power to destroy their happiness — should you choose.

This explains why this type of malevolent missive rarely ends with only a single letter being sent.

Even worse, for both sender and receiver, this addiction (like any other) starts requiring bigger and bigger hits in order to recreate the same rush the writer felt upon delivering their very first venomous letter. And this is where The Moving Finger and Angele’s case diverge. Our fictional malefactor either never got hooked on sending poison pen letters in the first place. Or, more likely, due to their definite endgame and the fact Miss Marple engineered their capture prior to the Black Hat reaching their last pre-written poisonous note, Christie’s bad guy never faced the decision of continuing their caustic campaign or stopping cold turkey. Hence, unlike Angele, they never need to adapt their strategy to avoid detection or feel the need to feed the monkey on their back. 

All of which possibly explains why Angele decided to double down rather than quit while she was ahead. 

The Prefecture of Tulle.

No longer satisfied with tormenting just the prefecture, Angele expanded her toxic campaign to include any man, woman, or child living within the borders of Tulle. And unlike Agatha Christie’s fictional ne’er-do-well in The Moving Finger, whose evil epistles failed to contain even the smallest kernel of truth. (According to the Vicar’s wife, who knew more than her fair share of Lymstock’s salacious secrets.) Angele raked up every scandal, revealed every overheard family secret, and repeated every morsel of gossip she came across — and through sheer volume, managed to sprinkle just enough truth amongst the lies contained in the lines of her noxious notes that shadows of doubt proliferated within the minds of Tulle.

The townsfolk, now aware en masse of the existence of a poison pen, unsurprisingly began casting sidelong glances at each other. This wholesale loss of trust translated into a mass cancellation of social engagements, entertainment, and gatherings across the city. The only upside? The lack of dances, dinners, and friendly chats over tea gave people more than enough spare time to monitor the post office’s mailboxes.

And what’s a girl to do when 13,000 pairs of unblinking eyes are dying to catch you red-handed at the public letterbox?

Angele simply stopped using them. 

Opting for the direct approach, she began leaving her malignant messages on her victim’s windowsills, doorsteps, on church pews, and within the confessional. She shoved them through letter slots, dropped them on sidewalks, apartment hallways, and office corridors. For an extra surge of excitement, Angele would occasionally slip one of her splenetic letters into someone’s shopping basket while they did their marketing. Whilst this change in delivery method removed the postman from the list of least-liked people in Tulle — by leaving no haven safe from her vicious attacks Angele, through either careful planning or pure happenstance, successfully managed to foster a state of mass anxiety. 

Can you imagine Angele’s dark delight when walking down deserted streets, past nearly empty taverns, and through the all-but-abandoned town square — which, only a few months prior, positively bustled with activity?

This wholesale avoidance of other people (which in some households included your spouse, older children, siblings, parents, or in-laws — depending on what despicable rumor you’d read about them or they you) might’ve ground the corrosive campaign to a halt. However, people still needed to work, children still required schooling, and larders filling…Meaning there was still a bit of foot traffic, and by tapping her evil genius gene, Angele found a way of exploiting those few brave souls who ventured outdoors — by creating a variation on a chain letter.

For example: Angele would address and leave a noxious note for Mr. X to find. Upon reading the obscenity ladened piece of paper, Mr. X would discover the contents actually concerned a Mr. Z — to whom the note would instruct Mr. X to deliver it too. Thereby giving her slanders a chance of spreading, with the added bonus of possibly causing an awkward conversation between two people and potentially straining a friendship, professional relationship, or marriage in the process. 

Speaking of marriage.

Despite her busy schedule of tormenting an entire town, Angele never forgot her roots. 

Again it’s unclear if, in Angele’s heart of hearts, hoped Mouray would abandon his newly minted marriage to Marie-Antoinette for her or if she wanted to punish her perceived rival Marie-Antoinette for stealing her chance at happiness and Mouray for not loving her.* Either way, Angele cleverly found a way to ratchet the pressure on the couple into the stratosphere — by singing the praises of the happy couple in the majority of her despicable epistles.

Despite the fact this style of harassment was considered the domain of sexually repressed spinsters (by newspapers, experts, and authors alike), these anomalous complements eventually led the stressed-out populace of Tulle to draw the same conclusion — that Marie-Antoinette must be the author of their misery. 

However, because French law did not consider it a crime to write or send poison pen letters, the prefecture couldn’t legally do anything about it. Especially since no one ever witnessed Marie-Antoinette placing, dropping, or leaving a bilious letter anywhere around town. So the court of public opinion sentenced her to ugly confrontations, muttered epithets, and general ostracization.

A punishment that might have become permanent had Angele’s addiction not spiraled out of control.

*(BTW: Mouray, at this point, had nullified Angele’s most effective weapon against him — by not only publicly acknowledging his illegitimate child and providing for them. He also broke things off with his mistress before marrying Marie-Antoinette.)

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2023