Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41)

by Agatha Christie

‘I can’t help thinking,’ said Ariadne Oliver, ‘that girls are really very silly nowadays.’ ‘Don’t you think they always were?’ asked Rowena Drake. Mrs Oliver considered. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she admitted.

they see how bright you are, and if you’re bright enough to pass your eleven-plus, you go on to a grammar school or something. But if you’re not bright enough, you go to something called a Secondary Modern. A silly name. It doesn’t seem to mean anything.’

Well, there’s no good going on saying things were better in the old days. Perhaps we only thought so.

you’d be surprised at the things that happen sometimes. My last electric light bill, for instance. I know there’s a proverb which says “To err is human,” but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.

Mental instability seems to be on the increase, though I must say that mothers and families generally are not looking after their children properly, as they used to do. Children are sent home from school alone, on dark evenings, go alone on dark early mornings. And children, however much you warn them, are unfortunately very foolish when it comes to being offered a lift in a smart-looking car. They believe what they’re told. I suppose one cannot help that.’

Someone walked into the house—not a difficult thing to do under the circumstances—someone of highly disturbed mentality, I suppose, the kind of people who are let out of mental homes simply because there is no room for them there, as far as I can see. Nowadays, room has to be made for fresh patients all the time.

‘The victim is always important,’ said Poirot. ‘The victim, you see, is so often the cause of the crime.’

‘You call her the old lady always. How old was she?’ ‘Well in the sixties. Sixty-five or six, say.’ ‘That is not so very old,’ said Poirot feelingly.

‘We go from the past to the future,’ said Poirot.

A lot of people who ought to be under mental restraint aren’t under mental restraint.

I prefer—’ the thought broke off in his mind as he thought back to what he had preferred. A drive through Devon lanes. A winding road with great banks up each side of it, and on those banks a great carpet and showing of primroses.

People are murdered for gain, for fear or for love.

You do not believe in the maxim “the fate of every man have we bound about his neck”?’ Mrs Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased. ‘An Islamic saying. I believe,’ said Poirot. Mrs Drake looked unimpressed. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘we do not take our ideas—or perhaps I should say our ideals—from the Middle East.’

the lawyers were against the foreigner, like people always are. I’m not very fond of foreigners myself, I’ll admit.

Now comfort is really the great thing. Once you’ve passed, say, fifty, comfort is the only thing that matters.’

You like beauty to look at, at the same time you dislike beauty almost on principle.