Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41)

by Agatha Christie

Kind of gay, I thought.”

But now I’ve got here, it’s so difficult because I don’t know where to begin.” “At the beginning?” suggested Poirot, “or is that too conventional a way of acting?”

“It is not unkind in murder to say what the victim was like,” said Poirot. “It is very, very necessary. The personality of the victim is the cause of many a murder.

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

“Can’t see what she saw in him.” “It is difficult,” said Poirot, “but it is one of the great consolations in nature that a man, however unattractive, will find that he is attractive—to some woman. One can only say or hope that they married and lived happily ever afterwards.”

He did not like to think of it, and because he did not like to think of it he was all the more decided in his mind that that was exactly what he was going to think of until by some means or other, light should shine out of the darkness and he should see clearly what he had come here to see.

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.