Death Stops the Frolic Quotes

“On a dais at one end of the room, Sid Simmons and his Ten Hot Dogs play swing music. Sid is the permanent attraction at the Westcombe Winter Gardens (open from April until October only!) and has brought his “boys” and their hideous noises to honour the Mayor,”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Canon Wallopp is by far the most imposing of the guests. Six feet and clad in fine raiment. A heavy, round red face with roving little eyes. Viewed through the golden glass of the vestibule where we first meet him, wondering where he’s left his ticket of invitation and fuming inwardly because he can’t enter without it, he looks like a dogfish in aspic. Some toady once told him he was the image of Cardinal Wolsey. Later, our friend Inspector Littlejohn is to notice in him a strong resemblance to a casual alcoholic tout who shouts loudly in front of a cheapjack-auctioneer’s shop on the promenade”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Sergeant Pettigrew looked puzzled, blew into his red moustache, shook his head and listened carefully until his chief’s footsteps had faded away in the distance. Then he took a paper-backed wild-west novel from his drawer and ponderously immersed himself in it. “Oh, ’ell,” said Sergeant Pettigrew as the telephone jangled. He marked his place in the book with a thick forefinger and contorted himself into a listening posture. “Swarebridge police station,” he said in what he thought was the terse manner employed by the sheriff of Four Horse Gulch.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Patchett was later heard to remark that Singleton hadn’t the guts to murder a rice pudding, which was a shrewd, if obscure comment.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Moggridge had given Burt his alibi, too, in a shrill, cantankerous bellow, uttered above similar noises in the heart of the cattle-market.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Cuthbert the Spider had recovered his poise somewhat but was overawed in the presence of the real law. He fixed his eyes on a glass case filled with a collection of out-of-date gyves collected by the Chief Constable and presented to the Force, which didn’t in the least appreciate the gift on account of the cleaning involved by it. “Are them ’andcuffs…bracelets…?” he whispered. “Yes,” replied the Superintendent and seizing the awed gangster under the armpits, he lifted him high enough for inspection. In the twinkling of an eye, Cuthbert (Spider) Silversides was converted into a G-Man.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“E never said that!” furiously interjected the mother. “’e never said that! H’alderman ’Arbuttle never talked like that. ’E hadn’t ’ad the fancy schoolin’ yor gettin’. Where you pick it up from, I do not know. These central schools…” She trailed-off apologetically. Nankivell almost burst internally, suppressing his mirth.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Enter a Gangster”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Either the spate of his mother’s talk was getting on his nerves or the way in which she punctuated her discourse was demoralising the gangster, for he began to snivel.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Yes, Cuthbert was at the party. But he wasn’t at chapel the day after, nor at school on Monday, nor at the meeting at Sunday school later. “… And you tell the gentleman why,” wound-up the mother, furiously shaking the captive in the jersey, until that garment slid round his neck and almost choked him.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Cuthbert’s boyish prattle was liberally interspersed with juicy phrases from one-time Chicago vocabulary. Theoretically, he was against the police. Standing now before Nankivell, he had his doubts.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“The turbulent newcomer was Cuthbert Silversides, aged nine. The name of Cuthbert was anathema to him, and among his associates he was known as Spider. Why, no one knew, except that young Silversides chose it for himself after a visit to the pictures. For Cuthbert was a gangster. He was the leading light of a small unruly crowd of Mr Hewston’s boys, whose high spirits led them into all kinds of behaviour which they imagined to be lawless and daring.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“You’d better not try squealing or yellin’. Won’t do you no good. You got to tell your tale, or I’ll set your father on you again and you know wot that’ll mean…” “Third-degree wiv the buckle-end of his belt agen,” came the prompt, unflinching reply. “Don’t talk none o’ your geometry to me. If this is what education does to you…”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“There is naturally much inter-marriage among Zionists, and in times of trouble families are united, those with even the most attenuated blood connections arraying themselves with their kith and kin. The dispute over Harbuttle and his offers of marriage, therefore, grows into a miniature war of the roses. In no time, the classroom is filled to overflowing with a crowd of angry, milling women, pushing each other about, afraid to smite hard but resorting to jostling, charging, thrusting and pulling tactics and using arms, elbows, bosoms, hindquarters and knees like battering rams. The noise is appalling. Speech flows freely and angry, vulgar words rush forth in torrents. Place, dignity, decorum are all forgotten in this release of pent-up feelings. The saintly, peace-loving women who one by one thrust themselves in the doorway of the room hoping in some way to calm the storm, are unwillingly sucked into the maelstrom and, before they know where they are, are rampaging with the rest. The men, dumbfounded and nonplussed, hang back, knowing that once they intrude, the bloody masculine forms of combat may supervene and replace the more dishevelled and shrill, but less deadly feminine type.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Arrowsmith in restrained fashion endeavours to separate the combatants, who are now holding each other by the arms as if about to execute a complicated tango step, but in her pacific efforts, becomes involved in the dance. Her temper roused, she boxes Mary on the ears. Mrs Tinker entering the room witnesses this outrage and wades in.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Behind these three pillars of Zion sat Willie and his mother, the former blowing gently down his whistle and generally disturbing the peace. Now and then, one of the trio turned and eye-browed or glared at the boy, but without success, although some of the efforts of Mr Butterfield would have turned a normal child into a pillar of salt.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Charlie, joint principal mourner, through marriage, of Mr Harbuttle, was dressed in black, his round, insipid, pale face set in lines becoming his bereavement and his thin, fair hair plastered across his head as though he had copiously anointed it with his own butter for the occasion.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Want a drink of water,” wailed Willie, surnamed Pole, and was again furiously shaken into a coma.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“one woman was heard excusing herself loudly for bringing her son, a small, mischievous, peevish-looking boy of about eight, dressed in a sailor suit, which he had outgrown. He was holding a whistle, fastened round his neck by a lanyard, and from time to time blew a blast on it. Whereupon, his mother tore the instrument from his mouth with a fury suggesting that she wished to extract whistle and all his teeth as well in one sweep and shook him violently until he fell into a form of stupor.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“But behind all her visions of possible matrimony — and there had been a few — was the comfort of the photo on the mantelpiece. She had loved and lost him and, come what may, there was still consolation in that past romance. He had been a soldier billeted in Swarebridge in 1915. He met her at the Saturday evening concerts at the Sunday School. She had been worth looking at then. So he took her home and afterwards met her, took her for walks along the path by the Sware, and kissed her a time or two. Then off to another place and, unknown to Miss Sleaford, another girl. A few letters which she still kept somewhere safe among a welter of odds and ends and a newspaper cutting telling that he was missing. He turned up after the armistice, but not at Swarebridge. In the heart of Miss Sleaford was enshrined through twenty lonely years, a young man who, still alive and now gross and fat, keeps a little pub in the Walworth Road and beats up his wife every Saturday night.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“he gingerly lowered himself on a horsehair couch, which felt like an unshaven chin and the hairs of which pierced even the stout cloth of his regulation trousers and tickled the skin beneath.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“The third side was decorated with balls, skeins and hanks of knitting-wool in many different colours like spaghetti dyed for a grotesque carnival.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Mr Hewston suffers from chronic intestinal torpor, which makes him peevish and physically inclined to lethargy.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“two more old men who refused to go home to their early beds and who, instead, prowled the school room in search of victims on whom to pour streams of reminiscences of by-gone Zion, Swarebridge seventy years ago, and what young people did in 1870.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“She was an enormous woman, with puffy hands, which she gingerly submitted for the tests. Her face was florid, with fat cheeks, and her chin receded, without any visible neck, into the blue satin dress which concealed a bosom like a featherbed in front and enormous hindquarters behind. She had a little button of a nose, bright black eyes set under a tight, shiny brow and straight dark hair carelessly gathered in a bun under a hat which seemed to rear itself uneasily from her head.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“He had a high, broad forehead, exaggerated by the fact that he was beginning to go bald and had a promontory of sleek black hair thrusting itself towards his brow in a last desperate effort to stem the retreat.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“One of the two, well past sixty, small, dapper, with a clear, sunburned complexion and a grey moustache, had the fine, intelligent head of a thinker, thatched with silver hair parted to left and to right. His hands were large, well-kept and useful looking. His expression was that of a philosopher whom the world can’t startle and who is prepared to take such novelties as it does bring with stoical calm and slightly mocking contempt.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“Behind the scenes, in a smaller room provided with geysers for the making of tea and large sinks for washing-up dirty dishes, a band of earnest workers was toiling at cutting bread at high speed to refill the returned empties from the hall in which the locusts were at work. Pile after pile of bread-and-butter was tipped on the plates which arrived, swept clean, through the hatches. The ammunition was provided by a number of women, armed with fierce and flashing breadknives and who brandished them with machine-like skill and precision. Each lady had brought her own tools, the better to get on with the job. Others continually replenished the tea urns from the steaming, spluttering water-boilers. Now and then, as one of the party left the kitchen for some purpose or another, there would be a brief pause whilst the rest criticised, verbally or by appropriate looks and gestures, her dress, demeanour, speed of work, contribution to the communal labours, or style of headgear — all the women wore hats, by the way — behind her back. Then they would turn-to again.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“There let us leave them, five hundred eating like one, tucking-in at their cold viands, licking platter after platter clean, mopping-up the tea and sending the urns empty away, and chewing their celery until the roof resounded with the noise of it.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic

“To the west of the Great North Road and just where it chops off a portion of the eastern fringe of Brentshire, there lies a district of England which has given its name to a fine breed of sheep, a heavy-cropping tomato, an inferior mangel-wurzel and a now obsolete form of the ague found there before the marshes were drained.”
― George Bellairs, Death Stops the Frolic