Susan in NC’s Reviews > DEATH AT DYKE'S CORNER > Status Update

“”There are two sides to it, Digby.I admit I see your point of view, but Anne has put the other very well. The small trader, owning his own shop, was a monopolist, and he has underpaid his employees and exploited the necessities of the country folk who had to buy their goods at his shop or go without. Independence has often been used as a cloak to inefficiency, and unwillingness to oblige, and economic unsoundness.””

“”Macdonald, by jove! They’re looking for trouble then. He’s one of the ablest men the Commissioner’s got. A first-rate fellow. IHe had a year at Oxford, I believe, then he was in the London Scottish—D.S.O., M.C. Then he joined the police and worked his way to where he is now. One of the best products of our police system.””

“Macdonald listened—as a mechanic might listen to an engine—fascinated for the hundredth time by humanity’s opinion of other humanity. A chauffeur summing up his master. “No ear he’d got. Couldn’t listen to the revs. Slap and bang, hit or miss . . . drove fast, didn’t brake till he was on to anything!””

“ “It’s not my province to give you advice,” he said quietly, “but I’d like to say this. In a case of this kind—a murder case, to put it bluntly—investigations are carried out on a formidable scale. In my own experience I should say that complete frankness is the only desirable course for an innocent man. Lack of it only causes more trouble eventually...””

“ Chief Inspector Macdonald was very quick to sense this tension, and he had enough perception to see that both parties had a case…Apart from the actual case, Macdonald could foresee a lively voyage for himself, steering between a Deputy Scylla and a constabular Charybdis.”