Strong Poison

Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.

Do you know how to pick a lock?' 'Not in the least, I'm afraid.' 'I often wonder what we go to school for,' said Wimsey.

There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

Why? Oh, well - I thought you'd be rather an attractive person to marry. That's all. I mean, I sort of took a fancy to you. I can't tell you why. There's no rule about it, you know.

If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle.

Philip wasn't the sort of man to make a friend of a woman. He wanted devotion. I gave him that. I did, you know. But I couldn't stand being made a fool of. I couldn;t stand being put on probation, like an office-boy, to see if I was good enough to be condescended to. I quite thought he was honest when he said he didn't believe in marriage -- and then it turned out that it was a test, to see whether my devotion was abject enough. Well, it wasn't. I didn't like having matrimony offered as a bad-conduct prize.

It's very good of you--" "No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may." "I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home.

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper

My idea is that Miss Vane didn't do it," said Wimsey. "I dare say that's an idea which has already occurred to you, but with the weight of my great mind behind it, no doubt it strikes the imagination more forcibly.

Don't be so damned discouraging," said Wimsey. "I have already carefully explained to you that this time I am investigating this business. Anybody would think you had no confidence in me." "People have been wrongly condemned before now." "Exactly; simply because I wasn't there." "I never thought of that.

There must be evidence somewhere, you know. I know you've all worked like beavers, but I'm going to work like a king beaver. and I've got one big advantage over the rest of you." "More brains?" suggested Sir Impey, grinning. "No - I should hate to suggest that, Biggy. But I do believe in Miss Vane's innocence." "Damn it, Wimsey, didn't my eloquent speeches convince you that I was a whole-hearted believer?" "Of course they did. I nearly shed tears. Here's old Biggy, I said to myself, going to retire from the Bar and cut his throat if this verdict goes against him, because he won't believe in British justice anymore.

Don't you know that I passionately dote on every chin on his face?

Damn it, she writes detective stories and in detective stories virtue is always triumphant. They're the purest literature we have.

I say--I've thought of a good plot for a detective story." "Really?" "Top--hole. You know, the sort that people bring out and say 'I've often thought of doing it myself, if only I could find time to sit down and write it.' I gather that sitting down is all that is necessary for producing masterpieces.

Parker looked distressed. He had confidence in Wimsey's judgment, and, in spite of his own interior certainty, he felt shaken. "My dear man, where's the flaw in [this case]?" "There isn't one ... There's nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl's innocent.

Why would you family think about it?" "Oh, my mother's the only one that counts, and she likes you very much from what she's seen of you." "So you had me inspected?" "No-dash it all, I seem to be saying all the wrong things today. I was absolutely stunned that first day in court, and I rushed off to my mater, who's an absolute dear, and the kind of person who really understands things, and I said, 'Look here! here's the absolutely one and only woman, and she's being put through a simply ghastly awful business and for God's sake come and hold my hand!' You simply don't know how foul it was.

He had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement - one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship.

... protested Mrs. Featherstone, a lady in her thirties, whose violently compressed figure suggested that she was engaged in a perpetual struggle to compute her weight in terms of the first syllables of her name rather than the last.

Salcombe Hardy groaned: "How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? Murderers learn it now at their mother's knee.

I hope you won’t mind, because I haven’t shaved since this morning, but I’m going to take you round the next quiet corner and kiss you.

Peter—do please be happy. I mean, you’ve always been the comfortable sort of person that nothing could touch. Don’t alter, will you?” That was the second time Wimsey had been asked not to alter himself; the first time, the request had exalted him; this time, it terrified him. As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, “Oh, I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.” Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again.

But even a watched pot cannot absorb heat for ever.

A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence.

It was the room of a woman without taste or moderation, who refused nothing and surrendered nothing, to whom the fact of possession had become the one steadfast reality in a world of loss and change.

And it is signed simply ‘M.’ A very cold letter, you may think—almost hostile in tone. And yet the appointment is made for 9:30.

Victim,” said the Hon. Freddy, “victim. Me for the corpse in the library.

I dare say that’s an idea which has already occurred to you, but with the weight of my great mind behind it, no doubt it strikes the imagination more forcibly.

so interesting and a really remarkable face, though perhaps not strictly good-looking, and all the more interesting for that, because good-looking people are so often cows.

I would damn well work to make it up to her—she’s got a sense of humour too—brains—one wouldn’t be dull—one would wake up, and there’d be a whole day for jolly things to happen in—and then one would come home and go to bed—that would be jolly, too—and while she was writing, I could go out and mess round, so we shouldn’t either of us be dull—I wonder if Bunter was right about this suit—it’s a little dark, I always think, but the line is good—