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

I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty---to one's friends and one's family and one's caste.

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

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.

The things she said seemed to have very little relation to the last thing she had said a minute before. She was the sort of person, Tommy thought, who might know a great deal more than she chose to reveal.

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.