When you think about Agatha Christie, you probably imagine sinister country houses, small villages filled with gossipy busybodies, and poison. It is the murder method most often associated with her work. Across her stories, Agatha killed 80 of her fictional victims with poison. With so many dead bodies, she had to find inventive ways of introducing the deadly substances to her victims, and every fan will have their favourite.
Perhaps it’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962), in which the victim is killed when her allergy puffer is laced with cyanide. In Death in the Clouds (1935), you’ll find death by poisoned dart, and in A Pocket Full of Rye (1953), the unfortunate Mr. Fortescue is killed when someone puts taxine in the marmalade jar.
My personal favourites are less dramatic. The poisoning of the curry dinner with arsenic in 4.50 from Paddington (1957), and the death of Emily Inglethorp from strychnine in The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). These murders have a domestic and everyday quality to them that is less sensational than the others. Their origins feel more firmly rooted in true crime, and we all know that Agatha had a habit of weaving the real into the imaginary.
Beware the chocolate box
One of the most interesting poisonings that appears across multiple Agatha Christie stories is death by poisoned chocolates. This method appears in two short stories and two novels. It was an idea that Agatha clearly found appealing. An anonymous box of chocolates sent to an individual or a household presented endless possibilities for suspects. It also added an extra layer of danger as there could be seemingly unintentional victims which could throw readers off the scent of the true intended victim.
The first use of poisoned chocolates by Agatha Christie came in the short story The Clue of the Chocolate Box, published in The Sketch in 1923, a journal which published many of Agatha’s early short stories. It was also later included (and the title shortened to The Chocolate Box) in the collection Poirot’s Early Cases (1974). The plot sees Poirot recount his only failed case to Captain Hastings, which took place in his days as a Belgian police officer. This is one of my favourite Poirot short stories because it gives us a glimpse of a young Poirot. When I watched the later TV adaptation starring David Suchet, it was the setting that I found most appealing on screen- the combination of poisoned chocolates and Brussels, a place iconic for its delicious treats, added an extra layer of allure to the story.
We next see Agatha use poisoned chocolates in the Tommy and Tuppence short story, The House of Lurking Death published in The Sketch in 1924 and then included in the collection Partners in Crime (1929). In this story, a young woman named Lois Hargreaves is anonymously sent a box of chocolates, which she shares with her household, many of whom become ill. The local doctor takes the remaining chocolates away for testing and finds them contaminated with arsenic. We are momentarily thrown off the scent when it is revealed that two other households in the village have also received similar boxes. This seems to be a red herring as Lois then tells Tommy and Tuppence that she has recently inherited a small fortune, and that the box of chocolates sent to her was wrapped in paper that came from her own household. The reason she knows this is that she is in the habit of doodling an image of three entwined fish, and she recognised her drawing on the paper wrapped around the chocolates.
A fun fact for Agatha fans is that this three-fish design appeared on later Greenway special editions of Agatha’s books, published from the late 1960s. The design was one Agatha chose herself, and although 32 books were published in this series, Partners in Crime was not one of them. The author Hilary Macaskill writes in her book Agatha Christie at Home, that Agatha first saw the design in an ‘Arabian bazaar’1 while on an archaeological dig with Max Mallowan. However, this short story suggests Agatha had already thought of the three-fish design, as she didn’t accompany Max on digs until after their marriage in 1930.
The first full-length novel to use poisoned chocolates was Peril at End House (1932). The story features Poirot and Hastings who are taking a break at St Loo in Cornwall when they meet an attractive woman named Nick Buckley, owner of End House. Recently, several attempts have been made on her life, and Poirot decides to get to the bottom of the who and why. Nick is later poisoned with cocaine-laced chocolates that she thought had been sent from Poirot, and the doctor remarks that the would-be murderer had cut the chocolates in half, mixed cocaine into the filling and then stuck the pieces together again, in a method he described as, ‘Amateurishly. What you might call a homemade job.’2
The final case of poisoned chocolates we see is in At Bertram’s Hotel (1965), where the method only gets a brief mention when Elvira Blake recounts that while at boarding school in Italy, she was sent a box of chocolates by an anonymous person. When she ate the violet creams (which were her favourites), she became very ill. She and a school friend later discover that someone had made small holes in the bottom of the violet creams and inserted an unknown poison.
True crime
These stories seem like the kind of thing that belong firmly in the realms of fiction, and yet, it turns out that there are quite a few cases of poisoned chocolates peppered throughout modern history. Agatha wasn’t the only author to find the idea of poisoned chocolates a tantalizing murder method. Her fellow member of the Detection Club, Anthony Berkeley was so keen on the idea that he wrote the novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), which is considered an iconic title of the golden age. In this novel, he mentions the real life 1922 case of Walter Tatum, who sent poisoned chocolates to the Commissioner of Police, Sir William Horwood (more on this case in a later article!).
The 1872 case of Christiana Edmunds, known as Brighton’s ‘Chocolate Cream Killer’ is probably the most well-known case that likely intrigued Agatha. Edmunds was in love with Doctor Beard and tried to poison his wife by giving her chocolate creams with strychnine in them. When Mrs Beard become unwell after eating the chocolates, Doctor Beard suspected Edmunds of poisoning his wife and cut off all contact. And then other people throughout Brighton began to fall ill after eating chocolates. Edmunds’s case has been written about many times, and I recommend the book The Crimes that Inspired Agatha Christie, and the Shedunnit podcast episode ‘Death by chocolate’ for a closer look at the Chocolate Cream Killer.
In writing this article, I was interested in whether the idea of death by poisoned chocolates had stretched beyond the shores of England, perhaps all the way to my native Australia. It turns out that it was not only the English who sent poisoned chocolates in the post.
One case that intrigued me happened in rural New South Wales in 1909. A woman named Ellen Jones (no relation of mine!) was accused of sending a box of chocolates to Keith Grant that had been laced with strychnine. The box of chocolates was wrapped with a blue and red ribbon and had an accompanying note that read: ‘Try and guess the sender, Keith’ (or a version of this, as it appears differently in nearly every newspaper article). The would-be killer was clearly a bit of a psychopath.
Fortunately for Keith (but unfortunately for others), some of the chocolates had fallen out of the box while being sorted at the post office, and some of the postal workers (and the young son of one of the workers) had decided to taste them. Almost immediately they all fell ill, but thankfully all survived due to quick medical intervention.
Ellen was arrested and put on trial but was found not guilty, despite the fact that she sent poisoned wedding cake to Keith’s mother, along with some love letters that had been sent to her by Keith’s mother’s new husband. Poor Keith really had nothing to do with it apart from the fact that his new step-father had jilted Ellen Jones in order to marry his mother. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!
The jury at Ellen’s trial returned a verdict of not guilty surprisingly quickly given how much evidence there was of her ill-will towards the family. In several newspaper articles, Ellen’s father’s standing as an affluent and prominent landowner in the area is mentioned, so perhaps that had something to do with the not guilty verdict.
When I researched further cases, I was shocked to find quite a few in Australia. Two others that particularly piqued my interest were: In 1908, a young woman was found dead on the side of the road outside a private hospital in Toorak, Melbourne, with strychnine-laced chocolates in her pocket. The chocolates had been given to her by her sweetheart; and in 1919, Annie Chapman from Ipswich, Queensland, sent poisoned chocolates to a woman that she was having a dispute with over a will. Both would have made quite good plots for an Agatha Christie novel!
Of all the cases that I read about on Trove, poisoned chocolates sent in the post was the most popular method, so I guess the moral of the story is, don’t eat chocolates sent anonymously in the post!
In the library with Mel 
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