Dorothy L. Sayers

“ Assigning a motive for the murder of a person without relations or antecedents or even clothes is like trying to visualize the fourth dimension—admirable exercise for the imagination, but arduous and inconclusive. Even if the day’s interview should disclose black spots in the past or present of Mr. Crimplesham, 104 how were they to be brought into connection with a person apparently without a past, and whose present was confined to the narrow limits of a bath and a police mortuary? ”

“ He looked from one to the other quizzically, his long lips curling into something like a grin.
"Sure of that?" exclaimed the vicar. "My dear Lord Peter, you were present at the funeral. You saw him buried yourself."
"I saw his coffin buried," said Wimsey mildly. "That the body was in it is merely an unverified inference."
"I think," said Mr. Frobisher-Pym, "this is rather an unseemly kind of jest. There is no reason to imagine that the body was not in the coffin."
"I saw it in the coffin," said Haviland, "and so did my wife." ”

“ The bog heaved horribly as he crawled over it, and slimy water squelched up into his face. He felt with his hands for tussocks of grass, and got support from them when he could.
"Call out again, my lord!"
"Here!" The voice was fainter and came from the right. Bunter had lost his line a little, hunting for tussocks. "I daren't come faster," he explained. He felt as though he had been crawling for years.
"Get out while there's time," said Peter. "I'm up to my waist. Lord! this is rather a beastly way to peg out."
"You won't peg out," grunted Bunter. His voice was suddenly quite close. ”

“ A woman, with the same opportunities, would have found out his address and occupation, whether he was married, how many children he had, with their names and what they did for a living, what his favorite author was, what food he liked best, the name of his tailor, dentist and bootmaker, when he knew your grandfather and what he thought of him—screeds of useful stuff!"
"So she would," said Fentiman, with a grin. "That's why I've never married."
"I quite agree," said Wimsey, "but the fact remains that as a source of information you're simply a wash-out. ”

“ Rivers running into the sand—rivers running underground, very far down—
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
By leaning his head down, it seemed to Lord Peter that he could hear them, very faintly, lipping and gurgling somewhere in the darkness. But where? He felt quite sure that somebody had told him once, only he had forgotten.
He roused himself, threw a log on the fire, and picked up a book which the indefatigable Bunter, carrying on his daily fatigues amid the excitements of special duty, had brought from the Times Book Club. ”