A Pocket Full of Rye

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

You think he is marrying her for money?' 'Yes, I do. Don't you think so?' 'I should say quite certainly,' said Miss Marple. 'Like young Ellis who married Marion Bates, the rich ironmonger's daughter. She was a very plain girl and absolutely besotted about him. However, it turned out quite well. People like young Ellis and this Gerald Wright are only really disagreeable when they've married a poor girl for love. They are so annoyed with themselves for doing it that they take it out of the girl. But if they marry a rich girl they continue to respect her.

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.

I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong.

Women were all the same. They promised to burn things and then didn’t.

Natural affection is one thing,” said Miss Ramsbottom, “and I hope I’ve got as much of it as anyone. But I won’t stand for wickedness. Wickedness has to be destroyed.

I should hardly advise you to go too much by all I’ve told you. I’m a malicious creature.

Yew berries?” “Berries or leaves. Highly poisonous. Taxine, of course, is the alkaloid.

He doesn’t seem to have been one of those food faddists who’ll eat any mortal thing so long as it isn’t cooked. My sister’s husband’s like that. Raw carrots, raw peas, raw turnips. But

The typists might have been so many blackbeetles.

It’s a classic, isn’t it, sir?” said Hay. “Third Programme stuff. I don’t listen to the Third Programme.