Cover Her Face Quotes

“For heaven's sake, Darling, keep your crusading instinct [for social justice] under control...It's uncomfortable to live with especially for those of us who haven't got one.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“The cultured cop! I thought they were peculiar to detective novels.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“He was never conscious of pity at moments like this and not even of anger, although that might come later and would have to be resisted. He liked to fix the sight of the murdered body firmly in his mind. This had been a habit since his first big case seven years ago when he had looked down at the battered corpse of a Soho prostitute in silent resolution and had thought, “This is it. This is my job.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“The bells had been ringing when he first arrived at Martingale. They had sounded often as a background to his investigation, the mood music of murder.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“was dead then? She was alive at ten-thirty p.m. and dead by the morning. That’s as much as anyone knows.” “Not”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Sitting in deep abdominal distress Martin let his mind rumble on cassoulet de Toulouse and remembered with yearning the poularde en vessu he had first eaten in a modest hotel in the Ardèche.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Already the rows of bunting stretched from side to side of the green walks gave the spinney an air of incongruous frivolity and the rooks seemed shocked into noisier than usual recriminations.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“He had a woman’s interest in the small change of life”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“an irregular union imposes conventions as rigid and compelling as those of marriage.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“discovered early in his ministry that charity is a policy as well as a virtue.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“He was an enthusiastic driver and loved small fast cars from which he could only extricate himself with difficulty, and in which he looked like a wicked old bear out on a spree.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Mr. Hinks murmured about the last touches for tomorrow’s sermon and faded like a thin ghost into the spring air.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“The dinner, like all unsuccessful social occasions, seemed to last three times its normal length.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Moral scruples soon give way when it’s a case of another pair of hands at the kitchen sink.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“if his parishioners could not always understand his sermons they were happy enough to accept this as sure evidence of their vicar’s erudition.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“At the time, of course, the party was both ordinary and rather dull. Three of the guests, Dr. Epps, the vicar and Miss Liddell, Warden of St. Mary’s Refuge for Girls, had dined together too often to expect either novelty or stimulation from each other’s company.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“No wonder you’re upset then, thought Felix. You never felt a genuine emotion in your life.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“A house full of people all disliking each other is bound to be explosive.” “Oh, it isn’t as bad as that!”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“And by ‘rather taken with her’ I suppose you mean that Stephen seduced her. Well, that usually does lead to complications and he must find his own way out as better men have done before him.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“amused contempt, a hint of conspiracy and a dislike which was almost frightening in its intensity.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Felix Hearne, for one, was not at Martingale that week-end. Yet, in her memory, he too sat at Mrs. Maxie’s table, watching with amused, sardonic eyes the opening antics of the players.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“We stood there hissing insults at each other in whispers and grovelling around in the dust to find his glasses.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“The last few days had drained her of so much emotion that this final revelation fell like a hammer on wool.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“The town hall, which looked as if it had been designed by a committee of morons in an excess of alcohol and civic pride, stood in isolated splendour bounded by two bombed sites where rebuilding had only just begun.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“If people died in your house the least you could do was to attend the funeral.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“He was a mild-voiced man with the face of a depressed St. Bernard dog who gave the impression of having wandered into the proceedings by mistake.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“and faded like a thin ghost into the spring air.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“This is a Christian country, my dear brother, and the wages of sin are supposed to be death, not eight bob of the taxpayers’ money.”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“dresses, some of the girls in clothes which”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face

“Mrs. Maxie wondered whether anyone could be as stupid as Sir Reynold appeared to be”
― P.D. James, Cover Her Face