The Thumb Mark Of St Peter
On 24th December 1977, Uncle Maxime and his wife sat down for their Christmas Eve meal. Since it was a special occasion, they decided to have some wine with their meal of Moules Marinieres, and recalled the bottle of Côte du Rhône, that they had been given the previous summer by their nephew, Roland. Pouring the wine, the couple toasted to the season and to their nephew, and took a drink. Minutes later, 80-year-old Uncle Maxime was dead, and his wife lay next to him unconscious. Fortunately, a passing neighbor happened upon the house, and Roland’s aunt as rushed to hospital, where she spent the next 11 days in a coma. Having nothing else to go on, the doctors concluded that Roland’s aunt and uncle were victims of accidental food poisoning. A tragedy to be sure, but an accident nonetheless. This diagnosis by default was brought into question a few days later, when the couple’s son-in-law, together with a local carpenter entered Maxime’s home.
Still on the table was the opened bottle of red wine. Being French, it is possible the Maxime’s son-in-law, along with his friend, were loath to see a good wine go to waste, but whatever the reason, a mouthful of wine each, and the pair collapsed on the floor unconscious.
It was now clear that food poisoning was not involved, and this caught the attention of the local police. An analysis of the wine bottle revealed that in addition to wine, the alcohol was laced with large amounts of atropine. Roland fell under immediate suspicion, as he had been the one to give the wine to Uncle Maxime in the first place. A search of Roland’s apartment revealed an Agatha Christie novel, with chapter 9 highlighted, a chapter containing a description of how the contents of a bottle of eyedrops (containing atropine) had been substituted for drinking water. Roussel confessed to injecting atropine into the bottle of Côte du Rhône which he had given to his Aunt and Uncle as a gift, and was found guilty of his Aunt’s attempted murder, and his uncle’s murder. Roussel’s true target, the woman he suspected of being involved in his mother’s death, never got to taste the wine.
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