"How convenient if you could ring up Harrods and say ‘Please send along two good murderers, will you?’"

“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.”

“The rottenness comes from within.”

“Ah, my friend, one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort.”

“It would be difficult Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons.”

“We had three servants, which was a minimum then.”

“‘I have often noticed that being a devoted wife saps the intellect,’ murmured Tommy.”