Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41)

by Agatha Christie

‘But you’ve written lots of books,’ said Joyce, ‘you make a lot of money out of them, don’t you?’ ‘In a way,’ said Mrs Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue.

Lol

‘I saw a murder once,’ said Joyce. ‘Don’t be silly, Joyce,’ said Miss Whittaker, the school-teacher. ‘I did,’ said Joyce.

It begins

I didn’t know it was a murder when I saw it. It wasn’t really till a long time afterwards, I mean, that I began to know that it was a murder. Something that somebody said only about a month or two ago suddenly made me think: Of course, that was a murder I saw.’

In the end it was decided that a galvanized bucket was preferable to the more meretricious charms of a plastic pail which overturned rather too easily.

What.a.fabulous word meretricious is

‘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.

‘He has not got ’flu,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘He has only a nasty cold. Everyone always thinks they have ’flu. It sounds more important. One gets more sympathy.

a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.

‘Old sins have long shadows,’ quoted Poirot. ‘As we advance through life, we learn the truth of that saying.

Poirot was pleased indubitably. He liked people to know who he was. Nowadays, he feared, most people did not.

‘There is always a brave new world,’ said Poirot, ‘but only, you know, for very special people. The lucky ones. The ones who carry the making of that world within themselves.’

‘It’s not a thing,’ she said meditatively, ‘that I should ever have thought of doing myself. Hammering nails, I mean, into someone’s head when they were asleep.’ ‘I hope not indeed,’ said her mother.

‘I hope,’ she said, ‘we do not take our ideas—or perhaps I should say our ideals—from the Middle East.’

This still seems so relevant to todays racist anti middle east views

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

Id say thirty is the turning point

Women could be beautiful, but Hercule Poirot was not at all sure that he liked beauty in men.