Francis Iles > Quotes

“Suspicion is a tenuous thing, so impalpable that the exact moment of its birth is not easy to determine.”
― Francis Iles, Before the Fact

“And as things turned out, the only lasting difference that her discovery of the notebook made to Lina was the loss of three hundred pounds a year. In a fit of panic at the remembrance of what Johnnie had once done when he was short of money, she had raised his allowance again to five hundred a year. So Johnnie scored.”
― Francis Iles, Before the Fact

“The evidence knocked clean out of their hands. Nothing but suspicion left…and you can’t arrest a murderer on suspicion, oh dear no! Only felonious loiterer’s and housebreakers and low scum like that. Not an artist in death, like Edmund Alfred Bickleigh, Esq. MRCS, LRCP.”
― Francis Iles, Malice Aforethought

“Madeleine Cranmere met him in the hall and showed him over the ground floor herself. She appeared delighted to listen to his rapturous enthusiasm, and consulted him on a few points as if he were an expert on the period. He was not, but he knew enough about it to be able to advise her roughly, and was far too flattered by the earnest way in which she listened to gather that actually she knew a great deal more about the points in question than he did.”
― Francis Iles, Malice Aforethought

“Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them.”
― Francis Iles, Before the Fact