Mademoiselle Rouselle

In the novel Elephants Can Remember, Mademoiselle Rouselle was Celia Ravenscroft's first governess at Overcliffe. Mlle Rouselle was well liked by Celia and her brother Edward. They both called her affectionately by the nickname “Maddy” (from the term Mademoiselle). She used to play games with the Ravenscroft children as well as Desmond Burton-Cox who was a neighbour. Mlle Rouselle had been recommended to the job as governess by one Madame Benoît, who ran the pensionnat which Margaret Ravenscroft once stayed at. Mlle Rouselle worked with the Ravenscrofts for three to four years and then had to return to Switzerland to take care of her mother who was very ill. After an interval of one year or so, her place was taken over by another Swiss woman, Zélie Meauhourat. After Mlle Rouselle's mother died, she started a pensionnat mainly for older girls who came to Switzerland to study languages.

Although not at Overcliffe at the time of the deaths of the Ravenscrofts, Mlle Rouselle is nonetheless one of the titular elephants in the book. She told Poirot that the Alistair Ravenscroft and his wife Margaret were very happy together and they loved their children. It was a happy family. Mlle Rouselle had also met Margaret's sister Dorothea whom she thought to be "a mental case". She was a very jealous woman who, for example, felt that too much affection was being shown to the children. According to Mlle Rouselle, she thought at one time Alistair had been engaged to Dorothea but had then transfered his affection to Margaret. Margaret was well-balanced and sweet but Dorothea oscillated between adoring her sister and hating her.

Poirot observed that Mlle Rouselle, about fifty, was a "fairly imperious woman. Would have her way. Intelligent, intellectual, satisfied, he thought, with life as she had lived it, enjoying the pleasures and suffering the sorrows life brings."