Before Agatha Christie became one of the best-selling authors of all time, she worked in a chemist’s shop in her hometown of Torquay, England, in service of someone she referred to in her memoir only as Mr. P.
Mr. P carried a dark lump of curare in his pocket — a poison that can quickly paralyze and kill. He walked around with it because it made him “feel powerful,” she wrote in “Agatha Christie: An Autobiography.” Christie couldn’t help but note that despite Mr. P’s “cherubic appearance,” such behaviors might make him a “dangerous man.”
