MADEMOISELLE B.

Who is Mademoiselle B? the lady who lives near the railroad track and is only seen, if she's seen at all, in white -- with gloves on her hands even when she's doing her embroidery? Maurice Pons tries to run down all of the unsupported facts about Mademoiselle from her peculiar birth to the strange disappearances-deaths to which she is said to have contributed in the little French village of Jouff -- a drowning in the river, a hanging in the woods, the (natural?) decease of the druggist, and finally the shattering tragedy with which the book ends -- or not quite -- for who is Mademoiselle B? Pons is a graceful and inordinately amusing writer and he has conceived a stylish hair-curler.