The Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot, #2)

by Agatha Christie

“The true work, it is done from within. The little grey cells—remember always the little grey cells, mon ami.”

The trained observer, the expert, without doubt he is useful! But the others, the Hercules Poirots, they are above the experts! To them the experts bring the facts, their business is the method of the crime, its logical deduction, the proper sequence and order of the facts; above all, the true psychology of the case.

Man is an unoriginal animal. Unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life, equally unoriginal outside the law. If a man commits a crime, any other crime he commits will resemble it closely.

You cannot have a murder without motive. The first crime was different—there we had a rich lover waiting to step into her husband’s shoes.” “Money is not the only motive for murder,” I objected. “True,” agreed Poirot placidly. “There are two others, the crime passionnel is one. And there is the third rare motive, murder for an idea, which implies some form of mental derangement on the part of the murderer. Homicidal mania and religious fanaticism belong to that class. We can rule it out here.”

Therefore, that possibility eliminated, we draw very near to the truth, which is, as always, very curious and interesting.”

“My friend, in many ways I have been an imbecile. But at last I see clearly.”

One may have a crime without a murderer, but for two crimes it is essential to have two bodies.”

But in investigating crime we must take our stand upon the commonplace.

I had learned, with Poirot, that the less dangerous he looked, the more dangerous he was.

Still, one must take crimes as one finds them, not as one would like them to be.