Strong Poison quotes

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

The judge was an old man; so old, he seemed to have outlived time and change and death. His parrot face and parrot voice were dry, like his old, heavily veined hands. His scarlet robe clashed harshly with the crimson of the roses.

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

The judge was an old man; so old, he seemed to have outlived time and change and death.

His parrot face and parrot voice were dry, like his old, heavily veined hands. His scarlet robe clashed harshly with the crimson of the roses. He had sat for three days in the stuffy court, but he showed no sign of fatigue.

“And which half would you be in?” enquired his lordship, fixing him for a moment with a cold eye and then returning his glance to the dock.

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

“Philip Boyes and the prisoner lived together in this fashion,” went on the judge, “for nearly a year. Various friends have testified that they appeared to live on terms of the greatest mutual affection.

“Charles,” said Wimsey, “you ought not to be allowed out without me. You’ve made a mistake, old man.”

“She did not do it. It’s very convincing and watertight, but it’s all wrong.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“My dear man, where’s the flaw in it?”

“There isn’t one. It’s damnably knife-proof. There’s nothing wrong about it at all, except that the girl’s innocent.”

“You’re turning into a common or garden psychologist,” said Parker, with an uneasy laugh, “isn’t he, Duchess?”

“I know. Being a writer of detective stories, I have naturally studied your career with interest.”

She smiled suddenly at him and his heart turned to water.

“Well, that’s rather a good thing in a way, because you’ll understand that I’m not really such an ass as I’m looking at present.”

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.

”

“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.”

Wimsey walked down the dingy street with a feeling of being almost lightheaded.

“That’s right,” said Wimsey, “nervy, you know—bad effect on the manners and so on.”

“Manners,” said a bearded gentleman suddenly and loudly, “are for the bourgeois.”

“Quite right,” said Wimsey. “Beastly bad form, and gives you repressions in the whatnot. Come on, Marjorie, or we shall all be getting polite.”

“People who work hard usually do pay back, I fancy,” said Wimsey, “—except geniuses.”

“Women geniuses don’t get coddled,” said Miss Price, grimly, “so they learn not to expect it.”

“We’re getting rather off the subject, aren’t we?” said Marjorie.

Many a moonlight night have I murmured it to the nightingales which haunt the gardens of St. Johns—though, of course, I was a Balliol man myself, but the buildings are adjacent.”

“If anybody ever marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle,” said Harriet, severely.

“A humiliating reason, but better than no reason at all.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we’ve all read them,” said Wimsey. “Forewarned is forearmed.”

“We owe a great debt of gratitude to the press,” said the Dowager Duchess,

“so kind of them to pick out all the plums for us and save the trouble of reading the books, don’t you think, and such a joy for the poor dear people who can’t afford seven-and-sixpence, or even a library subscription, I suppose, though I’m …

As the pace grew faster, he added egg after egg to those which were already spinning in the air.

There is a limit to the number of eggs which can be spun by human hands.

One day an egg slipped and smashed—then another—then a whole omelette of eggs.

All that wisdom and all that beauty, and they could not show him how to save the woman he imperiously wanted from a sordid death by hanging. And he had thought himself rather clever at that kind of thing.

The enormous and complicated imbecility of things was all round him like a trap.

He ground his teeth and raged helplessly, striding about the suave, wealthy, futile room. The great Venetian mirror over the fireplace showed him his own head and shoulders. He saw a fair, foolish face, with straw-coloured hair sleeked back;

“Will you give me one knock for ‘Yes’ and two for ‘No’?”

The advantage of this method of interrogation is that it obliges the enquirer to put leading questions.

“Are you the spirit of one who has passed over?”

P.S. I managed to do the “job” very nearly within the stipulated week, you see. I am so sorry it was not quite finished yesterday, but I was so terrified of spoiling the whole thing by rushing it!!

“Bunter,” said Lord Peter, looking up from this letter, “I knew there was something fishy about that will.”

“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.’

Miss Murchison was reminded of a little set of rules which Lord Peter Wimsey—half in jest and half in earnest—had once prepared for the guidance of “The Cattery.” Of Rule Seven, in particular, which ran:

“Always distrust the man who looks you straight in the eyes. He wants to prevent you from seeing something. Look for it.”

She shifted her eyes under her employer’s gaze.

It was a white paper packet, labelled with the name of a foreign chemist. The end had been opened and tucked in again. She pulled the paper apart, and saw that the packet contained about two ounces of a fine white powder.

Next to hidden treasure and mysterious documents, nothing is more full of sensational suggestion than a packet of anonymous white powder.

Miss Murchison caught up another sheet of clean paper, tipped a thimbleful of the powder into it, replaced the packet at the back of the cupboard and relocked the door with the skeleton key.

“Do you never overlook anything, Bunter?”

“I endeavour to give satisfaction, my lord.”

“Well then, don’t talk like Jeeves. It irritates me. What about the water bottle?”