Love & Other Poisons by Lesley McDowell review: 'enthralling'

It was the most scandalous case in Victorian Scotland. Madeleine Smith, daughter of a successful Glasgow merchant – one with a country house too – was charged with murdering her lover, Emile L’Angelier, a French exile, ten years older than her and working as a clerk in a Glasgow office. There was no doubt that they were or had been lovers. Madeline, however, had been engaged to a young man approved of by her father. Emile had threatened to send Madeleine’s love letters to her father, so there was clear evidence of motive.

Lesley McDowell

Moreover, Madeline had bought arsenic for medicinal purposes and her lover was killed by arsenic poisoning. But there was no evidence of how Madeline could have fed Emile the poison. The inability to prove this saved her. The Jury found the case “not proven”, that distinctive verdict open to Scots juries which in effect often means “we're pretty sure you did it, but it hasn’t been proved” or simply “go away and don’t do it again.”

Lesley McDowell, in this fine novel, comes up with a plausible explanation of how the arsenic might have been introduced into Emile’s body. She has no doubt that Madeline was guilty, yet feels for her. Madeleine is indeed the heroine here.

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In fact, the Glasgow scenes are only part of the story, and McDowell even denies herself the dramatic opportunities offered by the trial, restricting this to a few things said by the lawyers. She is at least as interested in what happened next, and indeed much later, for the novel opens with a brash young American forcing himself onto a nonagenarian Mrs Sheehy, claiming to be a friend of her granddaughter.

The American, Harry, has come from Hollywood, where the silent movies are about to become talkies. He has identified the old woman as the infamous Madeleine – which she denies, not wishing her granddaughter and other younger members of her family to know her dark secret. Indeed, Madeleine has come a long way from Glasgow. For some years she moved successfully in London society, but in America her life has been more modest. Her past is to be forgotten, and she is now a respectable old lady.

READ MORE: To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat review: 'a double-layered approach to writing history'

The American bullies her nastily, however, and she is also disturbed by a murder trial in New York in which she sees an accused woman as a victim. It is part of McDowell’s skill and understanding of human nature to make the very old Madeleine seem a sympathetic heroine, even though there is little doubt that a lifetime ago she murdered her French lover.

It’s an enthralling novel, a beautifully organised tale in which McDowell shifts the perspective with great skill. She has been living with this story for a long time, revealing that ten years ago she was planning to collaborate with that finely imaginative novelist Emma Tennant in a version of Madeleine's story. Tennant’s death made this impossible, but the finished article is a book that Tennant would surely have admired. It is certainly thoroughly enjoyable – a remarkably intelligent and at times very moving fictionalisation of an extraordinary life.

Love & Other Poisons, by Lesley McDowell, Wildfire, £20. Lesley McDowell is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 15 August