All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.

What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure.

Unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realization that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Sundays were marked by exhaustion. The moral code by which they lived was that of cleanliness, respectability and prudence. Religion was for those who had the time for it, a middle-class indulgence.

The apparent suicide, the certified natural death, the brutal murder - there was a cord which connected them. Its strength might be tenuous and its path convoluted, but when he had traced it, it would lead him to the heart of the mystery.

Murder changes everything.

One does not kill to avoid social inconvenience.

(A murderer about their victim:)"He was an expert in vicarious death. I should like to have been there to see how he enjoyed the real thing.