“Of course, you’re very young… you haven’t got to that yet. But it does come! The blessed relief when you know that you’ve done with it all—that you haven’t got to carry the burden any longer. You’ll feel that too, someday….”
“My dear lady, in my experience of ill-doing, Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals—and the process is often fraught with difficulties. There are no short cuts.”
“There were, I considered, amongst my guests, varying degrees of guilt. Those whose guilt was the lightest should, I considered, pass out first, and not suffer the prolonged mental strain and fear that the more cold-blooded offenders were to suffer.”
“There was a silence—a comfortable replete silence. Into that silence came The Voice. Without warning, inhuman, penetrating . . . ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Silence, please! . . . You are charged with the following indictments.‘”
“I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But—incongruous as it may seem to some—I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.”
“The storm increased. The wind howled against the side of the house. Everyone was in the living room. They sat listlessly huddled together. And, surreptitiously, they watched each other. When Rogers brought in the tea tray, they all jumped.”
“To see a wretched criminal squirming in the dock, suffering the tortures of the damned… was to me an exquisite pleasure. Mind you, I took no pleasure in seeing an innocent man there.”
“He thought: Peaceful sound. Peaceful place…. He thought: Best of an island is once you get there—you can’t go any farther … you’ve come to the end of things…. He knew, suddenly, that he didn’t want to leave the island.”
“Breakfast was a curious meal. Everyone was very polite…. Six people, all outwardly self-possessed and normal. And within? Thoughts that ran round in a circle like squirrels in a cage…. “What next? What next? Who? Which?”
“Five people—five frightened people. Five people who watched each other, who now hardly troubled to hide the state of their nervous tension. There was little pretense now….They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation.”
“My point is that there can be no exceptions allowed on the score of character, position, or probability. What we must now examine is the possibility of eliminating one or more persons on the facts.”
“But don’t you see, he’s mad? It’s all mad! The whole thing of going by the rhyme is mad! Dressing up the judge, killing Rogers when he was chopping sticks—drugging Mrs. Rogers so that she overslept herself—arranging for a bumble bee when Miss Brent died!”