The Nursing Home Murder Quotes

“Do you read crime fiction?”

“I dote on it. It’s such a relief to escape from one’s work into an entirely different atmosphere.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” Nigel protested.

“Perhaps not quite as bad as that. Any faithful account of police investigations, in even the most spectacular homicide case, would be abysmally dull. I should have thought you’d seen enough of the game to realise that. The files are a plethora of drab details, most of them entirely irrelevant. Your crime novelist gets over all that by writing grandly about routine work and then selecting the essentials. Quite rightly. He’d be the world’s worst bore if he did otherwise.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“Everybody talks to me about ‘P.M.s,’” complained Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn to Inspector Fox on Monday afternoon, “and I never know whether they mean post-mortem or Prime Minister. Really, it’s very difficult when you happen to be involved with both.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“He was shown into the drawing-room, an apartment of great elegance and no character. Above the mantelpiece hung a portrait in pastel of Cicely O’Callaghan. The artist had dealt competently with the shining texture of the dress and hair, and had made a conscientious map of the face. Alleyn felt he would get about as much change from the original as he would from the picture.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“It was as though they had so saturated themselves with professional behaviourism that they had lost the knack of being natural.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“They do a certain amount of mischief, they're an almighty nuisance, but as murderers I've no real faith in the British anarchist.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“Hospodi bozhe moy!”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“... In our midst—in our very midst, Matron—are secret agents, secret societies, powers of evil known to the Yard but unsuspected by the general public. Mercifully so." He stopped short, folded his arms, and wondered how much of this the woman would swallow. Apparently the whole dose.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

“Nash, who carried in his head a sort of social ladder, had quietly decided that police officers of all ranks were to be graded with piano tuners.”
― Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder