The ABC Murders (Hercule Poirot, #13)

by Agatha Christie

If the little grey cells are not exercised, they grow the rust.”

If I had asked those people for information they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened.

“It should be easier to discover because it is mad. A crime committed by someone shrewd and sane would be far more complicated.

All the time, whilst I seem to you idle, I am reflecting.”

“In the midst of tragedy we start the comedy.

“You see, Hastings? It is, as I tell you: there is always something to be found out.”

‘He wasn’t the sort of man you’d notice.’ Yes—there is no doubt about it…You have described the murderer!”

And that is where the gambler (and the murderer, who is, after all, only a supreme kind of gambler since what he risks is not his money but his life) often lacks intelligent anticipation. Because he has won he thinks he will continue to win!

A murderer is always a gambler. And, like many gamblers, a murderer often does not know when to stop.