Fire in her eyes, ice in her voice.
A man in love is a sorry spectacle.
It was rather like the exit of a bumblebee and left a noticeable silence behind it.
Murder can sometimes seem justified, but it is murder all the same. You are truthful and clear-minded – face the truth, mademoiselle! Your friend died in the last resort, because she had not the courage to live. We may sympathize with her. We may pity her. But the fact remains – the act was hers – not another.
The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal.
One must always proceed with method. I made an error of judgment asking you that question. Toeach man his own knowledge. You could tell me the details of the patient’s physical appearance- nothing there would escape you. If I wanted information about the papers on the desk, Mr. Raymond would have noticed anything there was to see. To find out about the fire, I must ask the man whose business is to observe such things. – Detective Hercule Poirot to Doctor Sheppard.
The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr Kipling tells us, is: ‘Go and find out.’ If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. One might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home.
The rain was pouring down again. The wind came in fitful gusts. The depressing sound of the pattering rain nearly drove them mad. By.
I did not really seek liberty. I am a civilised man. The civilised man knows there is no such thing. Only the younger and cruder nations put the word Liberty on their banner. There must always be a planned framework of security. And the essence of civilisation is that the way of life should be a moderate one.
It is a great advantage to be intelligent and not to look it.
Don’t be a fool,” Vera Claythorne urged herself. “It’s all right. Elly Kleinman and others are downstairs. All four of them. There’s no one in the room. There can’t be. You’re imagining things, my girl.
I’ve become a killer of the Lord. It’s the Lord’s will that I should kill you. So that makes it all right. You do see that, don’t you? You see, it makes it all right.
That gimcrack little desk, probably sham antique Louis XIV. She had said something to him once about there being a secret drawer in it. Secret drawer! That would not fool the police long.
Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!
The new world was the same as the old. The houses were different, the streets were called Closes, the clothes were different, the voices were different, but the human beings were the same as they always had been. And though using slightly different phraseology, the subjects of conversation were the same.
There are crimes that cannot be brought home to their perpetrators. Instance the Rogerses’. Another instance, old Wargrave, who committed his murder strictly within the law.
It’s only in books people carry revolvers around as a matter of course.
When it is a question of an irate middle-aged lady, there is only one thing to be done – listen to her.
It was a fantastic moment. In it, Anthony Marston seemed to be something more than mortal. Afterwards more than one of those present remembered that moment.
With more insight into the English character, I poured out a stiff whisky and soda and placed it in front of the gloomy inspector.