The Murder on the Links

For whom will a woman lie? Sometimes for herself, usually for the man she loves, always for her children

The great criminal can be a great actor

Man is an unoriginal animal. Unoriginal within the law in his daily respectable life, equally unoriginal outside the law. If a man commits a crime, any other crime he commits will resemble it closely.

But he obeyed the common dictates of human nature, arguing that what had once succeeded would succeed again, and he paid the penalty of his lack of originality.'

'Your idea of a woman is someone who gets on a chair and shrieks if she sees a mouse. That's all prehistoric.

And she turned and ran back up the road, looking like a modern Atalanta. I stared after her.

'Mon ami,' said Poirot, in his gentle ironical voice, 'is it that we are to remain planted here all night--just because you have seen a beautiful young woman, and your head is in a whirl.'

'Mon ami, two people rarely see the same thing. You, for instance, saw a goddess. I--' He hesitated.

'Yes?'

'I saw only a girl with anxious eyes,' said Poirot gravely.

'Order' and 'Method' were his gods.

An extraordinary little man! Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military moustache, air of dignity immense!

He was neat and dandified in appearance. For neatness of any kind he had an absolute passion. To see an ornament set crookedly, or a speck of dust, or a slight disarray in one's attire, was torture to the little man until he could ease his feelings by remedying the matter.

'There! Now we're friends!' declared the minx. 'Say you're sorry about my sister--'

'I am desolated!'

'That's a good boy!'