Susan in NC’s Reviews > The Chinese Shawl > Status Update

“ She had always been terrifyingly intelligent, conscientious, sincere, religious, dowdy, and prim. She retained a pristine passion for knitting, and for the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and his contemporaries. She was a perfectly kind and just human being and a remarkably good detective.” supt. March on Miss Silver

“There is something strange about being the only person awake in a sleeping house. It is all right if you are in your own room, but to go out and wander in untenanted places whilst those to whom they belong are withdrawn in sleep is the loneliest thing in the world…Standing there in the dark for a moment before she turned away, there came to her, faint but unmistakable, the sound of another closing door.”

“She had the sudden sickening sense of just what a trap she had walked into. No wonder her reluctance had warned her not to come. Whatever happened now between her and Carey was going to look like a repetition of the old story—And that’s how Tanis meant it to look. Lilian Ferrers had taken Oliver from Agnes Fane. Laura saw herself being pushed on to a lighted stage where she was to re-enact her mother’s part.”

“ She sounded warm and pleased, and all at once she hoped she didn’t sound too pleased. That was the worst of the sort of things Tanis had said—you pushed them out of your mind and tidied it up, and then you found some lurking trail of slime.”

““You’re not engaged to him, are you, Tanis?” Simplicity is always disconcerting. Tanis was disconcerted, but not for any time long enough to be measured. In a flash she was adjusted and striking back with a suave, “Well, not exactly.” Laura looked at her. Her eyes said steadily, “What’s the good of saying that sort of thing to me?” Then she turned to the door. “Shall we go down?” Yikes, waiting for a cat fight!

“ If Laura had ever disliked anything in her life, it was the prospect of having to dress with Tanis watching her. But she wasn’t giving in to it. Tanis was an underminer, but people can’t undermine you if you don’t let yourself be undermined.”

“Laura saw them as you see people in a picture. They arrested and held her attention. If at that moment she had known all that was going to happen between the three of them, she could not have felt a more breathless interest. She saw Tanis Lyle and a tall, dark man, and then she only saw Tanis Lyle, because Tanis was like that—she filled the room.”