Unnatural Death quotes

… bring oysters instead … No—as I was saying, it may be part of your duty to have suspicions and invite investigation and generally raise hell for everybody, and if you’re mistaken nobody says much, beyond that you’re a smart, painstaking officer though a little overzealous.

But doctors, poor devils! are everlastingly walking a kind of social tightrope.

People don’t fancy calling in a man who’s liable to bring out accusations of murder on the smallest provocation.”

“On my side of the argument,” said the man called Peter, with triumph. “Do carry on. Have something to drink.

It’s a poor heart that never rejoices.

And begin right at the beginning, if you will, please. I have a very trivial mind. Detail delights me. Ramifications enchant me. Distance no object. No reasonable offer refused. Charles here will say the same.”

“On my side of the argument,” said the man called Peter, with triumph. “Do carry on. Have something to drink. It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. And begin right at the beginning, if you will, please.

I have a very trivial mind. Detail delights me. Ramifications enchant me.

Distance no object. No reasonable offer refused. Charles here will say the same.”

“Do you know,” he said, suddenly, “I’m feeling rather interested by this case.

I have a sensation of internal gloating which assures me that there is something to be investigated.

That feeling has never failed me yet—I trust it never will. It warned me the other day to look into my Income-tax assessment, and I discovered that I had been paying about £900 too much for the last three years.

“Quite right.

It’s a silly kind of face, of course, but rather disarming, don’t you think?

I don’t know that I’d have chosen it, but I do my best with it. I do hope it isn’t contracting a sleuth-like expression, or anything unpleasant. This is the real sleuth—my friend Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard.

I do hope it isn’t contracting a sleuth-like expression, or anything unpleasant. This is the real sleuth—my friend Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. He’s the one who really does the work.

I make imbecile suggestions and he does the work of elaborately disproving them.

Then, by a process of elimination, we find the right explanation, and the world says, ‘My god, what intuition that young man has!’ Well, look here—if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a go at this.

“

Isn’t civilisation wonderful?

”

I mean, why be bitter? They can’t help it. I think it’s much kinder to give them an outlet than to make fun of them in books—and, after all, it isn’t really difficult to write books.

Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a good story in rotten English, which is as far as most people seem to get nowadays.

Don’t you agree?”

“There, I knew you had a nasty mind.

Even the closest of one’s friends turn out to be secret thinkers. They think in private thoughts which they publicly repudiate.

”

“She is my ears and tongue,” said Lord Peter, dramatically, “and especially my nose. She asks questions which a young man could not put without a blush. She is the angel that rushes in where fools get a clump on the head.

She can smell a rat in the dark. In fact, she is the cat’s whiskers.

”

“She is my ears and tongue,” said Lord Peter, dramatically, “and especially my nose.

She asks questions which a young man could not put without a blush. She is the angel that rushes in where fools get a clump on the head.

She can smell a rat in the dark. In fact, she is the cat’s whiskers.”

“Oh—well, you may have noticed my name croppin’ up in a few murders and things lately. I sleuth, you know. For a hobby.

Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don’t you see, which might otherwise strike inward and produce introspection an’ suicide.

Very natural, healthy pursuit—not too strenuous, not too sedentary; trains and invigorates the mind.”

“I told you I’d be turnin’ up again before long,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully. “

Sherlock is my name and Holmes is my nature.

I’m delighted to see you, Dr. Carr. Your little matter is well in hand, and seein’ I’m not required any longer I’ll make a noise like a bee and buzz off.”

Carr (whom I’m sure I never liked) simply to aggrandise himself. As though any doctor would pronounce so definitely upon what exact date it would please God to call a poor sufferer to Himself!

Human pride and vanity make a most shocking exhibition, Miss Climpson, when they lead us to cast suspicion on innocent people, simply because we are wedded to our own presumptuous opinions.

Poor Miss Whittaker! She went through a most terrible time. But it was proved—absolutely proved, that there was nothing in the story at all, and I hope that young man was properly ashamed of himself.”

“You’ve got an official mind, Charles,” replied his friend. “Your official passion for evidence is gradually sapping your brilliant intellect and smothering your instincts.

You’re over-civilised, that’s your trouble. Compared with you, I am a child of nature.

I dwell among the untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, a maid whom there are (I am shocked to say) few to praise, likewise very few to love, which is perhaps just as well. I know there is something wrong about this case.”

“Not at all. I am more modern. I shall use up-to-date psychological methods.

Like the people in the Psalms, I lay traps; I catch men.

I shall let the alleged criminal convict herself.”

“Not exactly. It lay among some bushes—the sort of place where a frolicsome young couple might go to play hide-and-seek.”

“Or where a murderer might go to play hide and let the police seek,” said Wimsey.

“Well, well. Have it your own way,” said Sir Andrew, smiling. “If it was murder, it must have been a poisoning job, for, as I say, there was not the slightest sign of a wound or a struggle.

“That’s odd, certainly,” said Parker. “I imagine that only rich people—”

“Only rich people or people who understand eating as a fine art,” said Wimsey. “The two classes are by no means identical, though they occasionally overlap.”

“It may be very important,” said Parker, wrapping the exhibits up carefully. “We’d better go along now and see the body.”

“Why?” repeated Wimsey. “

Because I believe this is the case I have always been looking for. The case of cases. The murder without discernible means, or motive or clue.

The norm. All these,”—he swept his extended hand across the bookshelf, and the shadow outlined a vaster and more menacing gesture—“all these books on this side of the room are books about crimes. But they only deal with the abnormal crimes.”

People don’t bother to come into court and explain that they dodder along very comfortably on the whole, thank you. Similarly, if you read all the books on this shelf, you’d come to the conclusion that murder was a failure.

But bless you, it’s always the failures that make the noise. Successful murderers don’t write to the papers about it.

They don’t even join in imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world ‘What Murder means to me,’ or ‘How I became a Successful Poisoner.’ Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues.

But bless you, it’s always the failures that make the noise. Successful murderers don’t write to the papers about it. They don’t even join in imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world ‘What Murder means to me,’ or ‘How I became a Successful Poisoner.’

Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues.

And they probably bear just about the same proportion to the failures as the divorced couples do to the happily mated.”

I swear all the heart-diseases and gastric enteritis and influenzas that get certified are not nature’s unaided work.

Murder’s so easy, Charles, so damned easy⁠—even without special training.

”

“

Miss Dawson fascinates me, Charles. Such a beautiful subject.

So old and ill. So likely to die soon. Bound to die before long. No near relations to make inquiries. No connections or old friends in the neighbourhood. And so rich.

“Miss Dawson fascinates me, Charles. Such a beautiful subject. So old and ill. So likely to die soon. Bound to die before long. No near relations to make inquiries. No connections or old friends in the neighbourhood. And so rich.

Upon my soul, Charles, I lie in bed licking my lips over ways and means of murdering Miss Dawson.

”

“I admit that,” replied Lord Peter, “but that only shows that as yet I’m merely a third-rate murderer. Wait till I’ve perfected my method and then I’ll show you—perhaps.

Some wise old buffer has said that each of us holds the life of one other person between his hands⁠—but only one, Charles, only one.

”

“

What is the proper suit to put on, Bunter, when one is an expectant father?

”

“

I regret, my lord, to have seen no recent fashions in paternity wear.

I should say, my lord, whichever suit your lordship fancies will induce a calm and cheerful frame of mind in the lady.”

“Unfortunately I don’t know the lady. She is, in fact, only the figment of an over-teeming brain.

But I think the garments should express bright hope, self-congratulation, and a tinge of tender anxiety.

”

“A newly married situation, my lord, I take it. Then I would suggest the lounge suit in pale grey—the willow-pussy cloth, my lord—with a dull amethyst tie and socks and a soft hat.

I would not recommend a bowler, my lord. The anxiety expressed in a bowler hat would be rather of the financial kind.

”

“Just as you like, Bunter.

But I did hope you sometimes got tired like other people.

”

What a blow for friend Carr, too. I did hope I was going to vindicate him and have him played home by the village band under a triumphal arch with ‘Welcome, Champion of Truth!’ picked out in red-white-and-blue electric bulbs. Never mind.

It’s better to lose a wager and see the light than walk in ignorance bloated with gold.

—Or stop!—why shouldn’t Carr be right after all? Perhaps it’s just my choice of a murderer that’s wrong. Aha! I see a new and even more sinister villain step upon the scene. The new claimant, warned by his minions—”

“Yes, no doubt—except perhaps the more exclusive sects—like the Agapemonites and those people who gather together to say om.

Was it Voltaire who said that the English had three hundred and sixty-five religions and only one sauce?

”

One of the posts turned out to be in the wet-paint stage, which added to the depression of the party. Finally, after several misdirections, blind alleys and reversings back to the main road, they came to a fourways.

The signpost here must have been in extra need of repairs, for its arms had been removed bodily; it stood, stark and ghastly⁠—a long, livid finger erected in wild protest to the unsympathetic heavens.

“It’s starting to rain,” observed Parker, conversationally.

“Look here, Charles, if you’re going to bear up cheerfully and be the life and soul of the expedition, say so and have done with it.

I’ve got a good, heavy spanner handy under the seat, and Bunter can help to bury the body.

”

“We can always try them in turn, and come back if we find we’re going wrong.”

“They bury suicides at crossroads,” replied Wimsey, dangerously.

“There’s a man sitting under that tree,” pursued Parker. “We can ask him.”

Mr. Cleveland, he bought the best part of the stock, and is doin’ well with them. Fine honest stock she bred, and they all used to say she was a woman of wonderful judgment with a horse—or a man either.

Nobody ever got the better of her twice, and very few, once.

”

He filled a pipe slowly and meditated. Within, a cheerful bustle in the bar announced the near arrival of opening time. Eight ducks crossed the road in Indian file.

A cat sprang up upon the bench, stretched herself, tucked her hind legs under her and coiled her tail tightly round them as though to prevent them from accidentally working loose.

A groom passed, riding a tall bay horse and leading a chestnut with a hogged mane; a spaniel followed them, running ridiculously, with one ear flopped inside-out over his foolish head.

“That’s right, sir, you couldn’t. My wife always used to say she was jealous of the ’osses. Said I preferred their conversation to hers. Well, maybe she was right, sir.

A ’oss never talks no foolishness, I says to her, and that’s more than you can always say of women, ain’t it, sir?

”

“I dare say you’re right,” said Wimsey. “

Now you mention it, there is something fretful about tea.

Mr. Piggin, two pints of bitter, please, and will you join us?”

I tried ’er with all the dogs I could lay ’and to, but it weren’t no good. Bloodshed there was an’ sich a row—you never ’eard. The Lord makes a few on ’em that way to suit ’Is own purposes, I suppose.

There ain’t no arguin’ with females.

”

“I bet it does,” interpolated Wimsey. “

I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don’t understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a lawsuit to disentangle it.

But do go on.”

“Ethically,” observed Mr. Murbles, “there may be much to be said for your point of view.

Legally, I am afraid, murder is murder, however frail the victim or convenient the result.

”

“I’ve been going into this little matter while you were coming along,” he said. “Awkward, eh? ha! Astonishing thing that people can’t say what they mean when they draw Acts, eh? ha! Why do you suppose it is, Lord Peter, eh? ha! Come now!”

“I suspect it’s because Acts are drawn up by lawyers,” said Wimsey with a grin.

“To make work for themselves, eh? I daresay you’re right. Even lawyers must live, eh? ha! Very good. Well now, Murbles, let’s just have this case again, in greater detail, d’you mind?”

“Intention?” snapped Mr. Towkington. “I’m astonished at you, Murbles!

The law has nothing to do with good intentions.

What does the Act say? It says, ‘To the brothers and sisters of the whole blood and their issue.’

“You are too easily surprised,” said Mr. Towkington. “

Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning.

For example, the word ‘daffy-down-dilly.’ It is a criminal libel to call a lawyer a daffy-down-dilly. Ha! Yes, I advise you never to do such a thing. No, I certainly advise you never to do it.

“I’ll risk it,” she said.

A passionate woman might have said it passionately. Or with a brave gaiety. Or challengingly. Or alluringly. Or mysteriously.

She said it grimly. Her fingers dug at his arm.

A passionate woman might have said it passionately. Or with a brave gaiety. Or challengingly. Or alluringly. Or mysteriously.

She said it grimly. Her fingers dug at his arm.

“Well, damn it all, I’ll risk it,” thought Wimsey. “I must and will know what it’s all about.”

He knew then.

No one who has ever encountered it can ever again mistake that awful shrinking, that uncontrollable revulsion of the flesh against a caress that is nauseous.

He thought for a moment that she was going to be actually sick.

As he stepped into the hall he turned and looked at her.

She stood in the middle of the room, watching him, and on her face was such a fury of fear and rage as turned his blood to water.

She is a professional woman by nature. She has a profession, by the way, but she does not intend to go back to it. Probably nursing demands too much sympathy—and one is under the authority of the doctors.

Mary Whittaker prefers to control the lives of chicken.

‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ Dear me! I wonder if it is uncharitable to compare a fellow-being to Satan. Only in poetry, of course—I daresay that makes it not so bad.

Hodgson. And besides, if she asked the question and anything were to happen—Mr. Probyn might remember it. No, she would not have approached Mr. Probyn.

To the person who has anything to conceal⁠—to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest⁠—to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London.

Where no one knows his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again.

London. Where no one knows his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again.

Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter.

Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious and all-enfolding London.

Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter. Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual.

London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious and all-enfolding London.

Not that Parker put it that way to himself. He merely thought, “Ten to one she’d try London. They mostly think they’re safer there.”

“I will be there,” said Wimsey, “though, mind you, I hate being driven by another fellow. It feels so unsafe. Never mind.

I will be bloody, bold and resolute, as Queen Victoria said to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

”

“My advice to you is to do what you think is right, according to the laws which we have been brought up to respect. Leave the consequences to God. And try to think charitably, even of wicked people. You know what I mean.

Bring the offender to justice, but remember that if we all got justice, you and I wouldn’t escape either.

”

“Somebody has gone to sleep here,” he said aloud.

“Funny⁠—it’s always the feet they leave showing.”

He scrambled down among the bushes, slipping on the short turf and nearly rolling to the bottom. He swore irritably.

And he preserved a dignified silence throughout the return journey.

The Whittaker case had begun almost imperceptibly, in the overhearing of a casual remark dropped in a Soho restaurant; it ended amid a roar of publicity that shook England from end to end and crowded even Wimbledon into the second place.

The bare facts of the murder and kidnapping appeared exclusively that night in a Late Extra edition of the Evening Views. Next morning it sprawled over the Sunday papers with photographs and full details, actual and imaginary.

The editor of the Wire was speaking the exact truth. The story had been received by the editor of the Evening Banner, sister paper to the Wire.

In times of crisis, it is sometimes convenient that the left hand should not know what the right hand does.

After all, it was an exclusive story.

Certainly the little sheet of paper was not in her writing. Somebody must have dropped it. It was natural to look and see whether it was anything of importance.

Miss Climpson was one of those people who say: “I am not the kind of person who reads other people’s postcards.” This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, precisely, that kind of person.

They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle, like that of the rattlesnake.

Miss Climpson left, but before leaving she neatly dropped her latchkey into a large basket full of sponges standing at her elbow. She felt she might like to have an excuse to visit South Audley Street again.

Conscience sighed deeply, and her guardian angel dropped a tear among the sponges.

Retiring into the nearest teashop she came to, Miss Climpson ordered a cup of coffee and started to think out a plan for honeycombing South Audley Street. She needed an excuse—and a disguise.

“Oh, I daresay.

O Turpitude, where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? Time’s called at the Criminals’ Arms, and there isn’t a drink in the place.

Wimsey’s Standard Poets, with emendations by Thingummy. As a matter of fact, I’m not at all sure that Miss Dawson’s death wasn’t the perfect crime—if only the Whittaker girl had stopped at that and not tried to cover it up.

“But the method!” cried Wimsey, “the method!

Hang it all⁠—here are all we people with our brilliant brains and our professional reputations⁠—and this half-trained girl out of a hospital can beat the lot of us.

How was it done?”