Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)

by Agatha Christie

She was, he judged, the kind of young woman who could take care of herself with perfect ease wherever she went. She had poise and efficiency. He rather liked the severe regularity of her features and the delicate pallor of her skin. He liked the burnished black head with its neat waves of hair, and her eyes, cool, impersonal and grey.

The body—the cage—is everything of the most respectable—but through the bars, the wild animal looks out.”

“If you will forgive me for being personal—I do not like your face, M. Ratchett,” he said.

Poirot did not reply for a moment. He was studying a grease spot on a Hungarian diplomatic passport.

“The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”

“Madame, the most kind, the most amiable are not always the cleverest.”