Status Updates From Fraud (Vintage Contemporaries)

"Hope is an old habit, not easily dislodged."

"She had a horror of compassion, both her own and that of others. She was determined never to be perceived as a victim."

"She could escape; escape was within her means, and she need explain herself to no one, need not offer excuses or explanations, since no one would be curious enough to make inquiries."

"Mrs Marsh was immersed in her daily exercise of scanning the Deaths column in The Times. The Births she brushed aside as no longer being of any relevance to her. The Deaths were a different matter."

"The second unusual circumstance was that the neighbour from whom they had obtained the spare key was unable to tell them anything about Miss Durrant's presumed disappearance because he was recovering from a stroke, and tended to muddle his words and also to mispronounce or forget them.

"The facts, as far as they could be ascertained, were as follows. Miss Durrant, a woman in middle years, living alone in comfortable circumstances, had been missing for some four months, although no one had seen her leave her flat in South Kensington, and her cleaner, who had a key, and who was used to finding the flat empty, thought little about the matter, until the money, which was usually left ... was not "

She remembered Baudelaire’s remark that he found it difficult to breathe when faced with a portrait by Ingres: he felt as though the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere. So insistent were the candid oval eyes that she could almost sense the processes behind them: discreet gurglings and shiftings in those flawless bodies.


Comtesse d'Haussonville