Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell Quotes

“venal,”
― Séamus Duffy, Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell

“These codes and sigils are all around us,’ he continued in the same vein, ‘we simply never notice them: look closely at a dollar bill the next time you see one; think of London’s memory as held, not in any library or museum, but in its ancient stone, bloodied soil, and turbid waters; finally, reflect upon the palimpsest which has been inscribed through the ages upon the City of London, for it is one of the most potently and most mysteriously coded precincts in the western world.’ Then the severely pragmatic Holmes seemed to come back down to earth. ‘I also intend to set in train some practical lines of inquiry of my own,’ he said.”
― Séamus Duffy, Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell

“By the time we had passed St Clement Dane’s, the pavements had grown less crowded, and as we drew by the Temple, thick woolly clouds of vapour were curling up from the steep lanes leading down to the river on our right and were beginning to suffuse the light from the gas-lamps and to deepen the gloom of the quieter streets of that quarter. Past St Paul’s, on through the sepulchral City and up beyond Bishopsgate, the breeze had dropped and the haze grew thicker and heavier. By the time we had arrived at our rendezvous with Lestrade in a warren of dismal backstreets in Spitalfields, we were mired in the drab wraiths of a summer fog.”
― Séamus Duffy, Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell