The Body in the Library (Miss Marple, #3)

by Agatha Christie

Fortunately they left the next day, so that my imagination could get to work unhampered by any kind of knowledge. When people ask “Do you put real people in your books?” the answer is that, for me, it is quite impossible to write about anyone I know, or have ever spoken to, or indeed have even heard about! For some reason, it kills them for me stone dead.

“Josie was very good at calming down unpleasantnesses. She could handle people well—sort of bright and firm, if you know what I mean.”

The deep lines on his face were the lines of suffering, not the lines of weakness.

“What do you mean, can’t find your car?” Stammering a good deal, Mr. Bartlett explained that what he meant was that he couldn’t find his car.

The poor thing has had to earn her living, and you can’t expect her to sentimentalize because a well-to-do man and woman—as you have described Mr. Gaskell and Mrs. Jefferson—are going to be done out of a further large sum of money to which they have really no particular moral right.

Mark Gaskell looked at Miss Marple in a somewhat puzzled fashion. He said doubtfully: “Do you—er—write detective stories?” The most unlikely people, he knew, wrote detective stories. And Miss Marple, in her old-fashioned spinster’s clothes, looked a singularly unlikely person. “Oh no, I’m not clever enough for that.

“Gentlemen,” she said with her old-maid’s way of referring to the opposite sex as though it were a species of wild animal, “are frequently not as levelheaded as they seem.”

“People call her a scandalmonger,” said Mrs. Bantry, “but she isn’t really.” “Just a low opinion of human nature?” “You could call it that.” “It’s rather refreshing,” said Adelaide Jefferson, “after having had too much of the other thing.”

I don’t really think I could ever murder anybody. I’m too easygoing.

I must look to them like the answer to the criminal investigator’s prayer! I had a motive, was on the spot, I am not burdened with high moral scruples!

“An alibi is the fishiest thing on God’s earth! No innocent person ever has an alibi!

He’s a benevolent despot, kind, generous, and affectionate—but his is the tune, and the others dance to his piping.”

For several years now the man has been driving himself ruthlessly. In his determination to live like other men, he has lived at a far greater pace than the normal man of his age.

him. It’s not what I say to my patients, Superintendent, but a man may as well wear out as rust out. A lot of my colleagues do that, and take it from me it’s not a bad way.

“Easier for him to look on her as a daughter than to look on Mr. Gaskell as a son. It works both ways. Women accept a son-in-law as one of the family easily enough, but there aren’t many times when a woman looks on her son’s wife as a daughter.”

For a time the thought of the pay buoys you up, but even that fails to stimulate imagination in the end!”

He laughed. His teeth flashed out white, his eyes crinkled up at the corners. He looked suddenly healthy and happy and very much alive.

“Because you’re so indiscreet. You would go round telling everyone—or, if you didn’t tell, you’d hint.” “No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t tell a soul.” “People who use that phrase are always the last to live up to it. It’s no good, dear.

“I told you, didn’t I, that I didn’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy myself over this case. A real murder in my own house! The sort of thing that will never happen again.” “I hope not,” said Miss Marple. “Well, so do I, really. Once is enough. But it’s my murder, Jane; I want to enjoy myself over it.”