FRANCE: Poison Pianist

For the past eight years, the citizens who live in Paris’ Rue La Fayette—a busy, noisy street near the Gare du Nord —have had their blood pressure driven high by a series of poison-pen letters. The writer demanded money for keeping secrets most of the neighbors did not have. The charges, all phony, said such things as, “Your husband belonged to the Gestapo. If you don’t bring me 50,000 francs I will denounce him to the police,” or “I know who strangled your sweetheart. Send me 50,000 francs and I won’t say anything.” The letter writer invariably used pink stationery, was promptly nicknamed by the press “the pink raven” (in French, the word “raven” is slang for a poison-penner).

No one managed to track the raven down until recently a police commissioner in the neighborhood began to get letters (“Madame So-and-So caused two persons to disappear in 1943 and buried their bodies in her garden”). The commissioner got on the trail, arrested Madame Célestine Camille Martin, a 57-year-old pianist and World War I widow. Unable to make a living as a pianist, she had tried as best she could to eke out her meager 7,000 franc ($20) monthly pension. Last week a Paris court sentenced her to eight months in prison. The prospect of jail did not alarm the pink raven. Said she: “At last I can eat.”