Murder Most Unladylike Quotes

After all, grown-ups always underestimate children. Children never underestimate each other.

One of the rules of the Detective Society is that we never say no to tea.

There were always things lurking, ready to throw your life off balance.

I don’t like to see girls wasting their talents. You are both clever, that I can see. And if you have brains, you ought to use them. It isn’t good for women to be ignored and side-lined.

It is funny how public the English are about disliking their families, even when it is not really true. Love is a secret to them, hate, far less so.

Growing up, I thought, seemed to be something that mostly happened when you weren’t looking.

I suddenly wondered whether growing up only meant you were older, not more wise.

Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to, to protect things we love.

promising!) was oddly disappointing, but what happened

I realized all over again how odd the English are. No matter how bad things get, they can always make light of them.

That is the problem with imagination – the more you use it, the more you see that the world in your head is not really the world you live in at all.

I thought to myself that, if life was acting, it was a pity that I was no good at acting at all.

There were carollers singing beside King’s College Chapel as we passed, their breath smoking with the song.

Tell that boy that we are detectives, and we have solved FIVE MURDER CASES!’ snarled Daisy. I looked at her, astonished – apparently, she can tell when the Detective Society is being demeaned in any language.

I was particularly amazed because boys, to her, are usually simply less interesting versions of girls.

For once, I simply needed her because she was my best friend.

You are getting quite queenly, Hazel Wong,

I blushed, feeling very un-queen-like.

thought to myself that, if life was acting, it was a pity that I was no good at acting at all.

GOODNESS ME!’ said Daisy very loudly beside me. ‘IS THERE PRAWN IN THIS DUMPLING?

Tea had been set out on the table, ready for our arrival. It was simple but delicious: muffins, ham, boiled eggs, and toast and butter, with Christmas cake for dessert.

But,’ Mr Mansour cried, ‘you are girls! Girls cannot be in the police!

we never say no to tea.

It was full of the most delicious displays, piled high with pink and white fancies, cakes piped with cream and scattered with nuts, and absolutely heaps of swirled golden-brown buns. They were studded with raisins and dripping with syrup. My mouth watered. It had been hours since those train sandwiches, their cheese slightly warm and their chutney gluey. Beyond the buns I saw tables full of people enjoying splendid teas. My stomach gurgled.

My good sir,' he said, 'do you know to whom you are speaking? I am the Prince of Bengal and these are my friends, the Princess of Kowloon and the Duke of Massachusettes. We are waiting for my father, the Maharajah, to come out of this bookshop so he can take us to the Ritz for tea. Do you intend to prevent us from going about our business?

(you see, not all of our Big Girls go to university. Most are only presented at Court and go on to marry Lords with no chins).

It’s snowing!’ I said in delight.

Mr Reid had rugged cheekbones and a dashing

me than England is to you!’ I pointed out. ‘Goodness,’ said Daisy, blinking. ‘What an odd, Alice-in-Wonderland thought that is!

shrimps

that

They made us all so miserable that even the nicest girls began to argue and snipe at each other horribly

I accept.

You are still my best friend in all the world, and the best detective I know who is not me.

Daisy’s plans are often quite mad, but this one seemed to have more than the usual chance of one or both of us dying.

I was so angry that I only thought about the sticky toffee pudding twice on the way out.

I breathed in the green heat and the dirt and the cooked-bun smell that is Hong Kong to me. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I could feel myself smiling. ‘It smells like home.’ ‘Not my home!’ said Daisy, sniffing bravely and trying not to use her handkerchief. ‘But – well, I suppose this is an adventure. I must just get used to it!

bonfire, the field was dark, little tendrils of fog drifting through the crowd. I could only dimly make out the shadow of the pavilion behind the fire, and the girls crowding in front of it looked like scribbles on a page. I could not even see the trees on the far edge of the pitch that led into Oakeshott Woods, although I knew they were there. I breathed out and my breath misted in front of me.

Il Mysterioso, Mr Strange, Madame Melinda, Mrs Vitellius, Sarah and the Countess. Judging

Il Mysterioso, Mr Strange, Sarah and the Countess.

I thought about what she’d said: how several people had been present for so many of the attacks. ‘It could be anyone in the college then!’ I said. ‘Anyone in Cambridge!

Who’s there?

dining room? You haven’t tidied it up?

piled high with pink and white fancies, cakes piped with cream and scattered with nuts, and absolutely heaps of swirled golden-brown buns.

Lavinia narrowed her eyes, threw the ball into the air and slammed her racket into it as though she was crushing the skulls of her enemies.

Siu lung bau. Har gau. Fung tsao. Lo bak go. Tsaa leung. Char siu bao,

I’m here, darlings,

What an odd, Alice-in-Wonderland thought that is!

I can't wait until I'm twenty. I shall go dancing all night and not bother with sleep at all.

I know you think that every dreadful thing that happens in the world is because you didn't stop it, but the truth is that dreadful things would happen anyway, even if you had never been born. The excellent fact is that you were born, and that means that you have the chance to make the world a slightly less horrid place

People are beautifully predictable- give them the chance to see anything, and they lose interest in it at once.

Things are all very well, but they don't make any sense without people.

Boys, to her, are usually simply less interesting versions of girls.

And Hazel Wong too,’ I heard Alexander add. ‘AND HAZEL WONG TOO!’ boomed Uncle Felix, and my heart did another strange flip in my chest. Alexander had remembered me. Me. Not Daisy, me.

Oh, how frustrating!’ said Daisy. ‘I might have guessed you’d notice. But I do so hate it, Hazel. Love is idiotic, and I despise it, but Martita is simply so pretty.

not a genius, because only I am that, but very close to it.

I will make sure it is. You’re good girls, and good detectives,’ said Aunt Lucy quietly. ‘You deserve one more chance. Now – promise me not to die?

heart fluttered.

Unfortunately, being in defence meant being next to Lavinia.

Madame Melinda

But who was she helping?’ I gasped. ‘Mr Daunt, of course,’ said Daisy. ‘Who else could it have been?

After all, there's no one more annoying than the person you spend the most time with.

All marriages are essentially two people lying to everyone else

Beanie.

One day we will be the finest consulting detective agency, although at the moment we are still forced to struggle through our schooldays as though we were ordinary children

I’m glad you’re on the case,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I had to lie to get you to the meeting. You really are fearless.’ ‘Daisy’s fearless,’ I said automatically. ‘Not me.’ ‘Oh?’ said Ah Lan, raising an eyebrow. ‘If you say so.

Sorry, Miss Barnard; yes, Miss Barnard,

We’re not in a book!’ I cried. It would be quite lovely to know that, no matter what happens, everything will turn out all right in the end, but Daisy and I can never be sure of that.

walke

a bit – no, wait, I do believe you’re taller!

wrong,

When you are dressed wrong, it is all you can think about. You can almost smell the way people are looking at you, and you are too busy shrivelling up inside to be able to think cleverly.

Daisy, like Sophie, likes the bland school food we are served, and never salts anything.

She has washerwoman’s skin, and, since she was stuck face down, lividity has caused the face and neck to have pronounced purple discoloration and swelling. It is impossible to tell much else from the body, I’m afraid.

cook? Good grief!

Beware, Miss Wong,

Ah Lan brushed a strand of hair off his face, looking thoughtful. It was a little like one of Alexander’s gestures, I thought, and my heart jumped just to think of him. But this boy, of course, wasn’t like Alexander at all.

There is a huge golden globe in the middle of the floor, that you can spin and put your finger on and trace the countries sliding away under your hand. I used to love to do it when I was little.

never say no to tea.

Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou lookest pale.

don’t tell me to think more quickly!

HIT IT, LAVINIA!’ Mr Temple whooped. ‘Would you mind NOT shouting?’ Mr Thompson-Bates asked crossly, turning towards him.

nerve.

What if you were the heroine all along? No, that wouldn’t be anywhere near as good a story.

began

pronounced

Nowhere in the world was really safe, was it? There were always things lurking, ready to throw your life off balance.

closed.

I glanced back at Mrs Vitellius as we left, and I thought she looked rather cheerful. She knew that she had the head start on us – how could we hope to solve the case before she did?

I arrived from Hong Kong part way through second form, and even then, when we were all still shrimps (shrimps, for this new casebook, is what we call the little lower-form girls), Daisy was already famous throughout Deepdean School. She rode horses, was part of the lacrosse team, and was a member of the Drama Society. The Big Girls took notice of her, and by May the entire school knew that the Head Girl herself had called Daisy a ‘good sport’.

Baliostra, speaking in very low growls (I worried rather about the state of Madame Melinda’s throat),

We were back at the crime scene, the table where Mrs Rivers had been taken ill only a few hours before. I stared around at it, remembering what I had seen last night, and shuddered.

not to blackmail them or do anything awful like that,

But she only wrote down our tea order rather distractedly (hot cocoa, Chelsea buns, four different sorts of sandwiches, and lemon cake) and then rushed away.

I stared around us. Christmas parcels were piled in every corner, pushed under tables among tired shoppers' feet. Above the steam from the teapots and the waft of the fresh buns there was a sharp scent of pine from the boughs hung up in the corners of the room—it was all wonderfully festive, and I loved it.

There were carolers singing beside King's College Chapel as we passed, their breath smoking with the song. Christmas was everywhere—in the bright window shops, in the parcels done up with string, the Christmas trees and boughs of holly, the sides of ham and poor drooping geese being carried home on shoulders and bicycles by bright-cheeked passers-by.

I felt my stomach rumble. We had been eating little bits of things, cake and mince pies, all day, but although they were delicious I was longing for butter and toast, or potatoes with a thick stew. I wanted the certainty of a proper meal, proof that ordinary life was carrying on outside our strange little bubble.

The study might be faded, but it was still one of the most beautiful rooms I had ever been in. The red velvet curtains might be rather frayed and old, and the chairs mismatched, but a log fire crackled in the grate, and the white walls were all but hidden by shelves and shelves of books. They went up almost to the ceiling, and the books looked worn with use and love. My heart swelled.

The lamps were lit, and the candles on the Christmas tree were burning. They made the tinsel glitter, the fronds of it floating gently, like fur or feathers. It all looked wonderfully festive.

The fire was blazing, and in front of the fire guard were propped two bulging stockings. I could see bars of chocolate and fudge, packets of Turkish Delight, and tangerines in silver foil. Next to them were piles of presents, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon. The room was festooned with green, spicy boughs, and breakfast was laid out on the low table next to the sofa: muffins and bread ready to be toasted, and eggs and bacon still steaming.