A Pocket Full of Rye

was an urbane man whose discretion was concealed habitually by a misleadingly forthcoming manner.

Though she had achieved leisure by her marriage with a well-to-do man, leisure had not satisfied her. She bought clothes, read novels and ate sweets, but he remembered her avid excitement on the night of Rex Fortescue’s death, and he saw in it not so much a ghoulish satisfaction but rather a revelation of the arid deserts of boredom which encompassed her life. Her eyelids fluttered and fell before his searching glance. They gave her the appearance of being both nervous and guilty, but he could not be sure that that was really the case.

He had realized, astutely, that the one chink in the armour of Mary Dove’s inscrutability was her pleasure in her own efficiency

I don’t like the language that’s used in this house, and I don’t like the amount of drink that’s taken, and I don’t approve of the goings on there’ve been

No question is ever settled until it is settled right. Kipling said that. Nobody reads Kipling nowadays, but he was a great man

faint chord of remembrance stirred

usual playing patience.

scapegoat for murder

she broke an ornament

“It’s probably splitting hairs