Agatha Christie Autumn is here! Not only was the Queen of Crime born in September, but fall is the perfect time to get cozy with a good mystery. So lets talk about a perfume she used in one of her Hercule Poirot mysteries!

Published in 1941, Evil Under the Sun, follows Hercule Poirot on a holiday in Devon. A flirtatious woman hated by both family and friends winds up dead and once again the Belgian detective is called upon to crack the case.

Interestingly, there is a plot point around perfume. Specifically an imaginary perfume called Gabrielle No. 8. Poirot smells the perfume on the dead woman and immediately recognizes it. He also later finds the character, Rosamonde Darnley, who is a fashion designer, to also wear the fragrance.

Where did Agatha Christie get her perfume inspiration?

As a fragrance history nerd, I absolutely love this because Agatha Christie was clearly making a nod to Chanel No. 5! Coco Chanel’s first name was Gabrielle, she was a fashion designer who girl bossed in the 1930s, and Chanel No. 5 was at the height of its popularity and had already been around for almost 20 years so it was extremely well known. A character who is a fashion designer with her own fashion empire in the 1930s? Agatha definitely had Chanel on the brain.

In the 1981 movie version of the story – the setting was changed to the Mediterranean and the perfume was renamed Soufflé de Mer and was more of an aquatic fragrance. In 2001, Poirot first sniffs the perfume on the victims night stand and then smells the same lingering scent in a cave – in that version the perfume was unnamed.

What perfume did Agatha Christie herself wear?

I haven’t been able to find that information yet but she was part of the wealthy class by birth so she would have had access to perfumes like Chanel No. 5 and probably any number of perfumes by Guerlain or Coty. She was also an avid gardener and even entered some gardening competitions, so what perfume would you have the queen of crime wear? Let me know in the comments. And if you want more on Agatha Christie, I did a series of podcast episodes on her a few years back you can find here.