They Do It With Mirrors

by Agatha Christie

It was practically impossible when looking at Mrs Van Rydock to imagine what she would be like in a natural state. Everything that money could do had been done for her—reinforced by diet, massage, and constant exercises.

Everyone’s life has a tempo. Ruth’s was presto whereas Miss Marple’s was content to be adagio.

he’s bitten by that same bug of wanting to improve everybody’s lives for them. And really, you know, nobody can do that but yourself.’

To youth it seems very odd to think that age was once young and pigtailed and struggled with decimals and English literature.

Young people belong to their generation. We may think they’re unwise in many of their doings, but we have to accept their decisions.

Possibly Carrie Louise, who had never cared for reality, did not enjoy her first brush with it.

‘We’re all mad, dear lady,’ he said as he ushered her in through the door. ‘That’s the secret of existence. We’re all a little mad.’

but I’ve never been able to alter people—I don’t see how you can. So it wouldn’t be any good worrying, would it?’

But people don’t really need a cause for feeling what they do feel.

‘I wish to God I could have spared you this, Caroline.’ His wife shook her head gently. ‘You can’t really spare anyone anything,’ she said. ‘Things always have to be faced sooner or later. And therefore it had better be sooner.

‘So difficult, isn’t it? To be clear about anything, I mean. Because if you’re looking at one thing, you can’t be looking at another. And one so often looks at the wrong thing,

There must be a reason—in my experience there always is—but “something wrong” was as near as she could get.’

It was very difficult, Inspector Curry thought, to get a true estimate of someone from what other people said.

‘I’ve always thought I knew what was real and what wasn’t … This doesn’t seem real—but it is … So I may be wrong everywhere