Liz Sower

“Oh, everything! The place where it happened, and the weapon, and the body, and any finger-prints or interesting things like that. I’ve never had a chance of being right in on a murder like this before. It’ll last me all my life?” I turned away, sickened. What were women coming to nowadays? The girl’s ghoulish excitement nauseated me. I had read of the mobs of women who besieged the law courts when some wretched man was being tried for his life on the capital charge. I had sometimes wondered who these women were. Now I knew. They were of the likeness of Cinderella, young, yet obsessed with a yearning for morbid excitement, for sensation at any price, without regard to any decency or good feeling. The vividness of the girl’s beauty had attracted me in spite of myself, yet at heart I retained my first impression of disapproval and dislike. I thought of my mother, long since dead. What would she have said of this strange modern product of girlhood? The pretty face with the paint and powder, and the ghoulish mind behind!”
― Agatha Christie, The Murder on the Links

“That’s why I say, go down to the country, take a house, get interested in local politics, in local scandal, in village gossip. Take an inquisitive and violent interest in your neighbours. If I may make a suggestion, go to a part of the world where you haven’t got any friends scattered about.”
― Agatha Christie, The Moving Finger