Carter Dickson

“Put it in terms of the not-too-serious, if you like. Who got into that locked room? And how was it done? And why should the cup have been moved again? We're up against the essential detective problems of who, how, and why. Simply because there was no murder or near-murder, does that make the mystery one bit less baffling?”

“When a man can't sleep, he won't let anybody else sleep either. If he doesn't go off to dreamland the moment his head hits the pillow, he gets frightfully annoyed and won't stay in bed.”

“...both Tom and I adore detective stories. Isn't that so, Tom?" [Lady Brace]"Right!" agreed her husband...."But they've got to be proper detective stories. They've got to present a tricky, highly sophisticated problem, which you're given fair opportunity to solve.""And," amplified Virginia, "no saying they're psychological studies when the author can't write for beans.""Correct!" her husband agreed again. "Couldn't care less when you're supposed to get all excited as to whether the innocent man will be hanged or the innocent heroine will be seduced. Heroine ought to be seduced; what's she there for? The thing is the mystery. It's not worth reading if the mystery is simple or easy or no mystery at all.”

“But the curator said nothing mattered so long as it looked all right to the ignorant." [Lady Brace]"Sort of government motto. I see." [Sir Henry Merrivale]”

“Sometimes it seems that men--yes, and even women too!--if they believe in a thing strongly enough, they get a strength or endurance that they wouldn't have believe possible.”

“There's the pity of it. Elaine Cheeseman's not as young as you; she's forty, maybe. But she's not bad-looking at all. If she took the trouble to dress properly, and occasionally she smiled instead of keeping a frozen, holy-zeal look as though she were goin' to the Crusades instead of only to the polling-station, she might even be a bit of a smasher.”

“That's the point. If these Labour MP's were really working men, they'd have some sense. But most of 'em, or at least the ones I've met, seem to be half-baked intellectuals who've specialized in economics or some such dreary muck.”

“I never met a gal who represented a mystery to me in quite the fetchin' way you did. It'd be dull and dreary just to find out how a crook got in and out of a locked room to steal a gold-and-jewelled cup. But it's very rummy, and fascinates the old man a bit, to wonder why a crook didn't steal a gold-and-jewelled cup he should have stolen.”

“Not that anybody cares two pins about history in these days.We've got rid of history; history is all my eye. But I've got to tell you the facts.”