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There is a dead saint, a deadly poison, and a mysterious holy ooze.
"I know I must die; someone has given me Aqua Tofana.” Mozart told his wife on his deathbed in 1791. Wolfgang was referring to an infamous poison, reputedly odorless and tasteless that was widely suspected of having killed hundreds of people in Italy a century earlier. Some evidence suggests that the poison was arsenic, either as a light and delicate powder or a clear and odorless liquid, both deadly and untraceable. Vials of this stealthy poison were sold to the ladies of Rome and Naples for the purposes of dispatching inconvenient husbands. Before she was hanged for her crimes - accused of helping kill some 600 people - she allegedly passed on the deadly secret to her daughter, who went on distributing the poison, disguised in innocent looking delicate glass jars decorated with images of the Saint Nicholas of Bari.
