‘Gentlemen of the jury, the charge against the prisoner is murder, and the punishment of murder is death – and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us the awful solemnity of the occasion which brings you and me face to face.’

So said John Inglis, the Dean of Faculty and counsel for the defence in the trial for murder of Madeleine Smith, when he rose to make his concluding address to an Edinburgh jury. His speech, I am told, is regarded as a masterpiece of advocacy, even today.

This book is an account of that well known story. It has been told many times before, the facts chewed over and stretched this way and that, interpreted and reinterpreted, but MacGowan manages to endow it with a brisk freshness due to an incisive prose style, a masterly assembly of the evidence which John Inglis himself might have approved, and a determinedly non-partisan approach.

It as no easy task to make that evidence clear for the reader. The facts of the case are easily laid down: in 1855, Madeleine Smith, a respectable young woman of good family recently returned to Glasgow from finishing school in England, made the acquaintance of Emile L’Angelier, a seedsman’s clerk from the Channel Islands. There was a 12 year age difference between them and it is clear that an inexperienced Madeleine lost her head to the dashing L’Angelier. There followed an intense and covert affair despite the opposition of her family. By 1857, the romance had become wearisome to Madeleine and she was about to be become engaged to a wealthy young merchant of the city of Glasgow. During the period February to March, L’Angelier was struck down three times, the third time fatally, by a savage illness which turned out to have been caused by a lavish administration of arsenic. In short order, Madeleine was arrested and charged with poisoning L’Angelier through the medium of cocoa, fed to him, the Fiscal claimed, through the bars of her bedroom window which overlooked Blythswood Square.

The reasons for her arrest were twofold: the discovery of some 500 letters written in the overheated and indiscreet style for which Madeleine became notorious (As the reporter for The Durham Advertiser put it: I have seen copies of these epistles…and I pray God I may never see such again); and the fact that it was discovered that she had made three purchases of arsenic just before each of Emile’s attacks of illness, and that she had also attempted to purchase prussic acid. Her guilt seemed sure when the course of the ill fated relationship was revealed through these letters.

L’Angelier was a demanding and bullying lover – he decided what clothes she should wear, whom she could speak to, where she should go (she had to plead with him to allow her to walk with her own brother in Sauchiehall Street). He constantly criticised her behaviour; her supposed lack of feminine accomplishments is compared unfavourably to those of his other female acquaintances. Madeleine’s letters refer to these admonishments constantly. She seeks approval constantly. She constantly concurs that she will be guided by him in all things. This was the Victorian language of love perhaps, but it wasn’t really Madeleine’s nature. When she was introduced to handsome wealthy Billy Minnoch, his admiration for her made her resent Emile and soon she tried to break things off with him. He blackmailed her then with the threat of showing her compromising letters to her father and Minnoch. This threat brought her to heel and the couple were apparently reconciled. But the Minnoch romance still blossomed. The wedding date was to be announced. Madeleine tried to get Emile to go out of town for his health’s sake, but he refused, his suspicions aroused by rumours of an upcoming wedding which were circulating. She was still deceiving her family about her involvement with Emile; she was deceiving Emile about her involvement with Minnoch. When Emile finds out , what will he do? And then he is taken ill…

It seemed a clear cut case and yet the jury would not convict her. Not Proven was the verdict she received (and was not, apparently, very pleased with it). The delight of the case and this book is the glimpses it gives of the underside of Victorian Glasgow and the absolute fairness of the Scottish legal system. The authorities were concerned that Miss Smith might be tried for fornication rather than murder, so some of the steamier letters were omitted from the trial. Emile himself came under severe scrutiny and was found wanting.

First it was established that he bragged of being an arsenic eater (for his complexion and possibly his virility). A string of witnesses testified to this and to a ludicrous vanity which did not sit well with a granite faced Scots jury. (you have to read the witness’s account of L’Angelier’s pride in his pretty feet which MacGowan has unearthed – in his testimony you can SEE his lip curling!). Arsenic eating was a Victorian vice and a very dangerous one which sometimes resulted in death – it was easy to misjudge the dose. L’Angelier also often talked of committing suicide over affairs of the heart – his seems to have been a wildly hysterical personality. And then there was the central mystery of the case. L’Angelier was taken ill three times. He spoke to people of forgiving Madeleine if she poisoned him, thus planting the suspicion of murder before he was even dead. But surely if he genuinely believed that he at risk from her, he would not have accepted cocoa form her hands again. In the back of his Bible he began to keep a memo of the times he had seen her and taken cocoa, coinciding with his illnesses. Why did he do that? A suspicion grew that perhaps he was actually framing Madeleine for his own murder, so determined was he that no other man should have her. This evidence was excluded from the trial since his odd motives could not be subject to cross examination.

Then there were witness accounts of his long walk back to Glasgow on the day he died. He was, according to one, taking laudanum (was he in pain, perhaps from overindulgence in arsenic? Was he already fatally ill before he got near Madeleine?) To another he seemed cheerful. Witnesses were unclear about the exact dates of his first two attacks and no one could prove that he had actually met with Madeleine on the night he died..

Everything about this case is ambiguous. Madeleine’s reason for purchasing the arsenic was that it was good for the complexion - she washed her face with it. And it did turn that some women used it for this purpose. Victorian households seem to have been veritable storehouses of deadly poisons. So between Emile eating arsenic and threatening suicide, and Madeleine washing in arsenic and contemplating suicide by prussic acid, the whole picture of what actually happened was obscure. I couldn’t have convicted her, just as the jury couldn’t, even though I think she did it. The evidence just wasn’t there.

MacGowan’s handling of the evidence is, as I said, masterly , and has produced an entertaining and clear account of one of the classic murder mysteries. His research has unearthed witness testimony which is very revealing of Victorian attitudes and at the same time shows why the jury were so noncommittal in the verdict – this is an unusual insight in an account of Madeleine Smith as the jury is usually heavily criticised both by pro and anti Madeleinites. The puzzles about what happened to l’Angelier can be seen in the overview MacGowan gives of all the theories about how he died at the end of the book. They’re all convincing in their way. And yet none meets ALL of the known facts.

He has also discovered another puzzle about Madeleine Smith. But I won’t reveal that here.

Perhaps the final comment should go to John Inglis – when asked , after the trial, if he thought Madeleine was guilty, he is reputed to have said, ‘I would sooner have danced with her than dined with her.’

Marion was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. She also has a story in the Paisley Writers Group anthology, 'A Strange Place' and a story about published in 'Over My Dead Body' online mystery magazine. To read Marion’s story, ‘A Small Miracle’ on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.