The Threefold Cord (The Inspector Knollis Mysteries #3)

by Francis Vivian

“Pretty fine place, Trentingham. Hope you like it—if you get time to see any of it.” “I liked what little I saw as we came from the station,”

Knollis permitted himself the trace of a smile. “He is one of the new aristocracy, sir?”

The Chief Constable opened his eyes so wide that his monocle fell to the length of its retaining cord. “Good God! You’ve an imagination like a fiction writer?” “Thanks for the compliment, sir.”

Mrs. Mildred Manchester received Knollis in the sitting-room, a room with an Adams ceiling, an Adams fireplace, and neo-Manchester furniture. Knollis was no aesthete, but the room clashed on his senses. Manchester was everywhere, and it was impossible to escape him even now that he was dead.

“News travels fast, doesn’t it?” “This is a village,” said Sir Giles,

I wouldn’t have gone down the back stairs in any case. Definitely against all the etiquette of the house.” “I’m not supposed to know that,” said Knollis. “I’m only a detective.”

one aristocracy has given place to another. An aristocracy of birth and manners has given place to one of money and dictatorial power.

I’m only moaning about the sharpers of democracy, the men who do all the shouting and take all the gain, who gain all the votes by telling the mob that they are being fooled, and then proceed to rob those who have voted them in.

You are the murder-specialist, and I’m only the poor country bobby with a penchant for recovering stolen bikes.”

I’m afraid that the human race is more notorious for its stupidity than for anything else. I was reading an article on Edgar Wallace the other day, and the author was lauding the wordage he had turned out. It set me thinking about Charles Dickens, and the number of books he wrote with a quill pen. We seem to be rushing to destruction as fast as our legs can take us.”

“There are many compensations for old age, Inspector! If I don’t want to hear, I don’t hear, and they think I’m deaf, and don’t worry me further. My eyes are too weak to read what I don’t want to read, and my legs won’t walk where I don’t want to go.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Knollis. “The modern definition of the word is almost synonymous with the word miracle, whereas it really means exactly what it says: coincidence.

“A landlord has to keep his mouth shut, or he’d soon lose his custom, sir. He has neither religion nor politics—nor opinions, for that matter.”

I know all this will sound silly to a man of the world like yourself who deals only in hard facts, but I am susceptible to atmosphere, and I know that something evil was at work. I know it!