Strong Poison

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.

... 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 t…

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

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 achieve…

"Why would your 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 t…

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…

"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.…

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

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…

"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 cond…

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.

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

"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 foot…

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…

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

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.

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

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 he…

"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.

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 see…