Death Walks the Woods Quotes

“That is all the money in the world at my disposition." She dropped the stilted words into the court like pebbles into a calm pool, wrapping her strange dignity around her like a cloak.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“You know, sir," he said, "she was easily the nicest woman I ever knew." Sampson suppressed a smile. It was funny to hear a boy of seventeen talk like that. All the same, he reflected, the lad might live to seventy and still find no reason to change his opinion.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“It is seldom that any judge really gets to the bottom of a case. The well of truth is usually too deep for the merely judicial plumb-line.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“She spent a great deal of her time in an endeavour, becoming yearly more and more difficult in a world increasingly disturbed, to "place" people properly, and she was obviously overjoyed that in this case the task had been so easy, and the result so satisfactory.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“The English," said MacWilliam, a trace of Highland accent appearing for once in his speech, "are not by and large an educated people.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“The duplicity of Mrs. Pink in having concealed the existence of a husband was enthusiastically condemned by one and all. She was variously described as sly, deceitful, and even—ultimate reproach—as no better than she should be.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Nothing of the smallest interest was going to happen today, at all events, and he could not for the life of him say why he had come there himself, except that, having finished the lecture on torts, he was at a loose end that morning, and that sitting with his neighbours in the village hall made a change from pottering round the garden at home.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Estate duties, as you are no doubt aware, are calculated on the prices ruling at the date of death. It is therefore sometimes quite important to expire at the right moment.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Then perhaps you wouldn't mind assisting us by answering a few questions?" "I am at your service, Superintendent." (That was much better. It was what all the chaps in books said, anyway.)”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Giving judgment," he read, "the learned deputy observed that the plaintiff had alleged that Mrs. Gallop was a very difficult customer to fit. Having seen Mrs. Gallop in the witness-box he could well believe it.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“The last sitting before the Easter vacation was at Markhampton. Pettigrew occupied the old Assize Court there, recalling battles long ago on the Southern Circuit, while he listened to a long and preternaturally dull dispute relating to a dressmaker's bill. (In his innocence, he did not realize that anything relating to women's clothes is automatically News, and he was astonished to find the case featured in all but one of the next morning's newspapers, garnished with a quantity of judicial sallies which he was quite unconscious of having uttered.)”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Daily he was called upon to solve the insoluble, to divine the truth between competing perjuries, to apportion derisory incomes among innumerable creditors,”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Judge Jefferson was still a sick man, and his deputy continued to be called upon to fill his place. Pettigrew travelled the length and breadth of Markshire. He passed from draughty town halls, where inaudible witnesses competed vainly with the roar of traffic outside, to stuffy police-courts loud with the clamour of imprisoned stray dogs. Daily he was called upon to solve the insoluble, to divine the truth between competing perjuries, to apportion derisory incomes among innumerable creditors, or to discover what had caused two stationary cars, each hugging its proper side of the road, to smash each other to pieces in the middle of the highway. He found time in the intervals to order the adoption of dozens of babies. He enjoyed himself immensely.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods

“Such, social historians of the future please note, were the housing conditions of Markshire in the year of grace 1952.”
― Cyril Hare, Death Walks the Woods