Mystery at Lynden Sands quotes

Would it be too much to ask you to say it—whatever it is—and then let me read my paper comfortably? One can’t give one’s mind to a thing when there’s a person at one’s elbow obviously ready to break out into conversation at any moment.”

Miss Fordingbridge had spent the best part of half a century in regretting her father’s admiration for Herrick.

“I can’t see myself as Julia of the ‘Night Piece,’ ” she complained with a faint parade of modesty; and it was at her own wish that the hated name had been abbreviated to an initial in family talk.

“It amuses the children, at least. I haven’t heard Stanley or Cressida complaining about it yet; and they seem to dance most of the time in the evenings.”

“So like the younger generation! They get married⁠—and they dance. And that’s almost all you can say about them.”

“Oh, no. Let’s be fair,” her brother corrected her mildly. “They both play bridge a good deal; and Cressida’s not bad at golf. I can’t say, taking her over all, that I’m ashamed of her as a niece.

“H’m! He beats me usually,” Wendover confessed.

“I don’t mind being beaten by play; but I hate to be beaten by the rules.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Wendover? You seem to have a grievance,” Cressida asked, seeing a twinkle in Wendover’s eye.

“If you play a game, you must play that game and not one you invent on the spur of the moment, squire,” Sir Clinton warned him, with no sign of sympathy in his tone.

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

“Hark to the chief constable!” Wendover complained. “Of course, his mind dotes on the legal aspect of things, and he’s used to keeping all sorts of rules and regulations in his head.

“No chalk, you said, inspector?”

“Ah, and yet some people tell you that playing pool is a waste of time; and that the habit of chalking your cue and then pocketing the chalk is reprehensible. We now confound them.”

He produced a cube of billiard-chalk as he spoke and, taking out a penknife, trimmed the paper away.

“And that is?” demanded Wendover, forestalling the inspector.

“That there’s nothing there to see,” Sir Clinton observed mildly. “I thought you’d have noticed that for yourself, squire.”

Behind Wendover’s back the inspector enjoyed his discomfiture, thanking providence the while that he had not had time to put the question himself. The chief constable turned to Sapcote.

Sir Clinton made no effort to conceal his surprise.

“Another murder! In a place this size? They must be making a hobby of it.”

The inspector observed with satisfaction that his superior had given up any thoughts of bed, for he was beginning to dress himself.

“… Mr. Wark. By the way, you’re a fisherman, aren’t you? Then you’ll be able to tell me when high tide’s due this morning.”

“About half-past seven by God’s time, sir.”

Sir Clinton was puzzled for a moment, then he repressed a smile slightly different from his earlier one.

Stanley Fleetwood’s manners gave way under the combined action of his physical pain and his mental distress.

“Where do you buy your soap?” he asked sarcastically. “It seems a good brand. But it won’t wash. There’s nothing doing.”

Inspector Armadale threw a glance at his superior which suggested that Sir Clinton’s intervention had been a mere waste of time.

“I don’t think Armadale made much of that business,” Wendover commented in a voice low enough to be inaudible to their nearest neighbours.

“There’s nothing so undignified as a bit of bullying when it doesn’t quite come off.”

Sir Clinton never allowed a criticism of a subordinate to pass unanswered.

“Well, in a way, yes,” was the unashamed reply.

“But commission agent sounds rather better if it gets into the papers.”

“A very proper tribute to respectability,” Sir Clinton commented drily.

“On the police charge-sheet, you mean?” Sir Clinton asked.

“Never saw the inside of a gaol in my life,” he boasted. “Nor did Staveley either, that I know about.”

“I’ve no doubt my colleagues did their best,” Sir Clinton said amiably.

“His name? Well, I called him Jack.”

“Just Jack. Or at times: ‘Here! You!’ He answered to either.”

Inspector Armadale’s temper began to show signs of fraying.

then, with a cold nod to Billingford, he led the way out of the cottage. Sir Clinton maintained silence until they were beyond earshot of the door, then, as though addressing the world at large, he said pensively:

“I wonder why they brought such a large card-index down with them from town.”

“Card-index, sir? Where was it?”

… have an excitable clever type that’s carried away by strong feelings on the spur of the moment, so that all the cleverness goes for nothing and the murderer does the work in a frame of mind that doesn’t give much heed to the possible consequences.”

“And, of course, the murderers who are neither stupid nor excitable are the ones who never get caught, eh?”

Sir Clinton interjected in an amused tone. “That accounts for us police being at fault now and again.”

“The finer graces do get shoved aside in a murder case,” Sir Clinton admitted. “One regrets it; but there it is.

You can’t wear a collar and tie when you’re going to be hanged, you know.

”

“That’s all right, then,” Sir Clinton answered. “

It’s a dangerous game, making the police look silly.

And the inspector’s too good a man to hold up to ridicule. He makes mistakes, as we all do; but he does some pretty good work between them.”

“Reminds one a bit of Sam Lloyd’s ‘Get off the Earth’ puzzle, doesn’t it?” he suggested, when they came back to the point where the three tracks met. “

You can count your three men all right, and then⁠—flick!⁠—there are only two.

How do you account for it, squire?”

“

I never held with head-scratching, inspector. It’s a breach of good manners, and not even friend Paul shall tempt me to make a habit of it.

I don’t think he’s very far away; but I doubt if you’ll get your hands on him in a hurry. My impression is that he’s gone to ground in a very safe hole.”

and one can never guess how big that flaw is till one has the whole of the evidence together. It’s safest to wait for all the evidence before publishing any conclusions; that’s what I always bear in mind.

Mistakes don’t matter much, so long as you keep them to yourself and don’t mislead other people with them.

”

and there would be nothing to prevent her refusing then. They could not coerce her in a church or before a registrar.

Nowadays forced marriages are found only in books.

The pressure of the gag had hurt her mouth, and she had some difficulty in framing words in which to make her submission.

“Why suggest a robbery at Foxhills? For that was what they evidently intended the police to swallow. As a matter of fact, they’d have been much better to have left the thing alone.

It was a mistake to fake evidence; it always is.

However, they’d done it, and I wanted to know why they’d done it. So, when the Fordingbridges arrived, we went off to Foxhills.

“

But when you come to ask: ‘Cui bono?’ you find that the problem’s like one of those quadratic equations we used to get at school, where there are two answers and one seems just as good as the other.

“Suppose the claimant was an impostor, and see where that leads you. Derek Fordingbridge had spent a lot of time with Peter Hay in earlier days.

“It wasn’t my business to make pets of anyone, and exclude them from suspicion merely because I liked them in private life, squire.

Many murderers are most amiable persons⁠—Crippen, for example. ‘A fair field and no favour’ is the only motto for a conscientious detective.

“Before we had time to delve further into the Peter Hay case, however, the Staveley murder occurred. There’s no need to go into the whole business; it’s fresh in your minds;