Status Updates From The Trail of the Serpent

p.35/482. Chapter IV. Richard Marwood Lights His Pipe

p.30/482. Chapter III. The Usher Washes His Hands

p.20/482. Chapter II. Good for Nothing

p.11/482. Bookmark

p.6/482 (repaginated). Book the First. Chapter I. The Good Schoolmaster.

“Now, if he’d committed the murder, he’d know of it; and he might sham surprise, but he wouldn’t be surprised; and this young gent was knocked all of a heap as genuine as——” Mr. Peters’s ideas still revert to the bust of Napoleon—“as ever that ’ere forring cove was, when he sees his old guard scrunched up small at the battle of Waterloo.”

😂

“To the ardent minds of the juvenile denizens of the waterside the swollen river was a source of pure and unalloyed delight. To take a tour round one’s own back kitchen in a washing-tub, with a duster for a sail, is perhaps, at the age of six, a more perfect species of enjoyment than that afforded by any Alpine glories or Highland scenery…”

“The ordering of the teas and the choosing of the arbour were a labour of love with the fair Kuppins. She selected a rustic retreat, over which the luxuriant tendrils of a hop-vine fell like a thick green curtain. It was a sight to see Kuppins skirmishing with the earwigs and spiders in their sylvan bower, and ultimately routing those insects from the nests of their fathers.”

The detective!!