Mon cher docteur! Do you not think I know the female mentality? The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence—it would not interest his fellow-villagers for a minute!

Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory---let the theory go.

The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple.

I like a good detective story,' he said. 'But, you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. But the murder is the end. The  story begins long before that—years before sometimes with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day.

What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.

There hung about her the restrained energy of a whiplash.