Madame Déroulard

In the short story The Chocolate Box, Madame Déroulard was the elderly mother of the French politician Paul Déroulard. When Paul Déroulard died, his late wife's cousin Virginie Mesnard invited Poirot to investigate because she did not believe that he had died from natural causes as everyone else seemed to think.

Towards the end of the story Poirot had almost concluded his investigation and was about to denounce the killer when Madame Déroulard summoned him and asked him to lay out his findings. Poirot was certain he knew who the killer was and laid out all the proofs. It was only then that Madame Déroulard stunned him with a confession: the true killer was not who Poirot thought but she herself. Madame Déroulard explained that her son was highly anti-Catholic and she was appalled that when he became a government minister, would implement policies against the church. But much more serious than that, Madame Déroulard had herself witnessed Paul killing his wife by pushing her down the stairs. He had done this, she told Poirot, to inherit money to use in his political career. Paul's sins did not stop there, for he had a weakness for women and began to take advantage of Virginie Mesnard although he had no intention of marrying her. Virginie Mesnard was fascinated by him and the time came when she was ready to yield to him.

At the end of the confession, Poirot realised that he had made a bad mistake. One important clue he came across earlier was the chocolate box which had a mismatched lid--the colour of the lid was different from the rest of the box. Madame Déroulard suffered from cataract and her eyesight was very poor and she needed atropine drops. Only she would have made a mistake about the colour of the box lid. The truth had been staring him in the face and it was one that he should have picked up much earlier.