Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41)

by Agatha Christie

Peculiar drugs and—what do they call it?—Flower Pot or Purple Hemp or L.S.D., which I always have thought just meant money; but apparently it doesn’t.”

LOL

Hercule Poirot.

Much time was spent trying to accurately pronounce this name

I was getting hysterical.”

No ma’am, I can assure you that your uterus is not causing your emotional distress. I know this was written in a different time but LORD I hate that word.

“Well, you see, at first I didn’t think of it. Not straight away. I mean, children do queer things sometimes. I mean there are queer children about, children who—well, once I suppose they would have been in mental homes and things, but they send them home now and tell them to lead ordinary lives or something, and then they go and do something like this.”

Showing some prejudice of the times against people with psychiatric disorders/mental health problems.

I’d say, you know, roughly, Poirot, that more girls nowadays marry wrong ’uns than they ever used to in my time.”

I wish we weren’t *still* doing it en masse.

there have been very many sad fatalities with children all over the countryside. They seem to be getting more and more frequent. 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.”

Latch-key kids have been around forever, it seems.

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

I don’t think he’s blaming murder victims for their own murders, right? Maybe I’m misinterpreting that.

“Most unlikely, I should say. And I can assure you, Monsieur Poirot, this statement that the girl made was solely in order to impress friends and perhaps interest a famous character.” She looked rather coldly across at Mrs. Oliver. “In fact,” said Mrs. Oliver, “it’s all my fault for being at the party, I suppose.” “Oh, of course not, my dear, of course I didn’t mean it that way.”

Sure, Jan.

‘A’ levels

Advanced placement courses

au pair

Foreign Nanny/assistant

“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.

I feel that, Poirot.

For himself, Poirot did not agree. He was a man who thought first always of justice. He was suspicious, had always been suspicious, of mercy—too much mercy, that is to say. Too much mercy, as he knew from former experience both in Belgium and this country, often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

Certainly a complicated issue.

it is vital that they should continue with their studies if they are to have the chance of doing well in life.”

Stay in school kids!

Still, it’s made a lot of difference nowadays. All this inoculation they give the children, and that. Not nearly as many cases as there were.

Almost like vaccines...*cheks notes* SAVE PEOPLE?

“Look here,” said Nicholas, “supposing Whittaker—what age is she, do you think? Forty odd? Getting on for fifty—Women do go a bit queer at that age.”

Oh, indeed?

“Perhaps he exposed himself to her first,” said Nicholas hopefully. “I mean, there’s always got to be a sex background to all these things.”

These dudes are so horny. Everything is sex and lesbians 😆

Put that in your moustache and smoke it.”

😄😄

You can’t preserve this. It’s wild. To keep something wild is far more difficult than to preserve it.”

Get thee beyond me, Satan.”

Hrm. Indeed.