“...and I realized not without a sinking feeling that he was already completely in Feely’s thrall, hanging on her every word like ball on a rubber string, nodding like a demented woodpecker, and grinning like a fool.”

“You must have loved her awfully," I said, realizing even as I spoke that I made it sound as if Fenella were already dead. "Yes, sometimes very much," Porcelain said reflectively, "-and sometimes not at all." She must have seen my startled reaction. "Love's not some big river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you're a bloody fool. It can be dammed up until nothing's left but a trickle..." "Or stopped completely, I added.”

“A peculiar feeling passed over me--or, rather, through me, as if I were an umbrella remembering what it felt like to pop open in the rain.”

“I found a dead body in the cucumber patch,' I told them.'How very like you,' Ophelia said, and went on preening her eyebrows.”

“Good morning, Flavia," she said at last, but her acknowledgment of my presence came too late for my liking.”

“I waved my hand like a frantic dust mop fingers spread ludicrously wide apart as if to say “What jolly fun ” What I wanted to do actually was to leap to my feet strike a pose and burst into one of those “Yo-ho for the open road ” songs they always play in the cinema musicals but I stifled the urge and settled for a ghastly grin and an extra twiddle of the fingers.”

“The very best people are like that. They don't entangle you like flypaper.”