Foxgloves are steeped in folklore. These plants are also the source of digitalin, a strong heart stimulant which in excess can cause death. Agatha Christie used digitalin poisoning more than once in her writing. In "The Herb of Death," a Miss Marple short story found in The Tuesday Club Murders, foxglove leaves are mistaken for sage and used to stuff ducks for dinner. Tommy and Tuppence, Agatha's husband and wife sleuthing team, encounter foxglove leaves mixed in with spinach for a salad in Postern of Fate. In both cases, the entire household partakes of the meal and gets sick, but only one member of the group dies. This is because someone has secretly added a fatal dose of digitalin into a drink the victim has imbibed. Agatha was famous for having more than one murder occurring in order to mask the true victim or motive for the murder. Often some innocent person was bumped off by the murderer in order to cover his or her tracks. No one would suspect one of the household as being the poisoner if everyone was sick. In many of her stories, the poisoner did just that, knowing that a little bit of the poison might not be fatal to himself, and thereby throwing suspicion onto someone else. Very tricky, but Agatha's sleuths always discover the culprit in the end, usually after a few more corpses have piled up.
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