Sweet Poison

Sweet Poison takes its title from a line in King John: Sweet sweet sweet poison for the age's tooth. It refers not only to the fact that the central character dies of poison thought to be self-administered but also to the fact that this character is a man obsessed with the past. Augustus Gale was a man in love - in love with a woman of genius who had been dead for over a century. This macabre devotion poisoned both his own life and the lives of those around him: his son and daughter his beautiful second wife and even his devoted mother. Yet it was a strictly confined obsession and when a party of archaeologists sought permission to excavate a Roman mosaic pavement on Augustus's land they were met with blunt and contemptuous refusal. It might be said that Augustus Gale was a man who deserved to die but if so whose was the hand that killed him and with what motive?