The Cater Street Hangman Quotes
"Is a great enemy as much a part of a man’s life as a great friend? Surely it must be. It must be the cross thread in the fabric of emotions."
"Was a great enemy as much a part of a man’s life as a great friend? Surely it must be. It must be the cross thread in the fabric of emotions."
"Funny how people always say they are sure when they mean they are not sure."
"It is not good for a woman to be alone. It leaves her vulnerable to all kinds of dangers."
"Sin is not spite, my dear child; sin is the beginning of the road to damnation, to indulgence of the flesh, to fornication and the worship of the Golden Calf!"
"It’s quite an art, indeed nearly as great as the art of avoiding them. Don’t think about it. There’s really nothing you can do."
"But there was danger in it, and danger, risk, was the essence of fortune."
"If she were to win something permanent, the chance must be taken now."
"There is every degree of harlot, just as there is every degree of just about everything else!"
"Obviously there was an entire world about which she had much yet to learn, if she were to thread her way through it successfully, and reach the prize she intended."
"There is no man who won’t make you wretched some time or other."
"Women observe other women. You would be surprised how much might miss your eye, or mine, but not theirs."
"You are saying she was killed because she was immoral, and she was immoral because she was killed!"
"I personally think they are using it as an excuse to be inquisitive, to exercise their curiosity."
"I think perhaps you had better begin again, on a more promising line of enquiry."
"Each dependent upon the other, Miss Ellison. A relationship of coexistence, of mutual feeding, interdependence."
"Poverty does not necessarily produce crime. There are plenty of poor people who are as honest as I."
"Whether you are referring to moral standards, or standards of living you didn’t say. But perhaps it doesn’t matter—they are not as far apart as the words imply."
"I doubt you have ever seen real poverty in your life."
"And they don’t come out of their own world except for profit. There’s no profit in garotting three helpless girls in Cater Street."
"What a terrible life. Surely it would be better to be a sweep."
"Murder itself is hardly sensible, Emily. It is a bestial crime, a crime of animal passion, and unreason."
"I imagine everything, Miss Ellison, and believe nothing until there is proof."
"Taking off the dead heads means the plant doesn’t put any more goodness into them, seeds and so forth. It helps to make them bloom again."
"Not able, Miss Ellison." He was stiff now, full of outraged pride. "That implies mere indifference. I am better than Ashworth. I'll prove it."
"It worked marvellously. Foxworthy disrupted the tête-à-tête, demanding to prove his superiority."
"I can't bear vulgarity," he went on aggrievedly. "Bad taste for a woman to make an exhibition of herself."
"Perhaps it was too much to require of any man of breeding and wealth that he should be faithful, but she would most certainly require that he be discreet in his liaisons."
"We must trust in the Lord," the vicar replied. "And September is frequently the most delightful month of the year."
"It is a church bazaar, Miss Ellison, to raise money for charity, not for women to disport themselves."
"Surely to appear on the business of the Lord one would wish to wear one's best, Vicar."
"We are not a public amusement," he said icily.
"I have already made enquiries and Mrs. Dunphy has seen two, but they were not satisfactory."
"This sort of thing doesn't happen in a well-ordered house."
"It was only when she was at home, lying in bed staring at the gaslight patterns on the ceiling, that she reviewed the evening."
"People were full of the most curious traits."
"She fell asleep, still thinking of the practicalities."
"I wouldn’t dream of it, Grandmama. Do you want dinner upstairs or will you be sufficiently recovered in time to come down for it?"
"It doesn’t look old, and hardly the type of letter one would wish to keep. I think we may presume she received it shortly before she was killed."
"It would be difficult to read it as anything else. Although, of course, it may not be a threat of death, by any means."
"They frightened her! They tried to force her to do something she obviously did not want to! Isn’t that a crime?"
"Probably because it wasn’t a burglar at all, but some kind of romantic involvement."
"I grew up in the country. My parents were in service; my mother was cook and my father gamekeeper."
"I knew rather more about the country than he did. I had friends among the poachers and gypsies."
"No one, least of all the young, wishes to visit a house in mourning. It is too much of a reminder of death, when one wishes to think of life."
"Nothing can make it better, and one is afraid to be clumsy and make it worse by saying something stupid."
"He flattered Chloe into believing all sorts of things that could not come true."
"I believe that if Chloe had not known that man she would be alive today."
"One can prevent them from doing it again! And, in fact, one has a duty!"
"What has happened here? This used to be a quiet, a good place to live."
"We are all looking at each other and wondering! I am! I’m looking at men I’ve trusted for years, and wondering if it could be them."
"I realize I hardly even know people I thought I loved."
"It is not true, and I believe you know me well enough to have known that before you spoke."
"Women frequently did odd and inexplicable things; it was usually an obscure way of laying claim to attention."
"Everyone is looking over his shoulder; women daren’t even go next door alone."
"Even cabbies don’t like coming to Cater Street any more."
"It’s affecting even the ways we think of each other."
"Nothing strips the soul quite as naked as fear."
"What passes for wit has become mere vulgarity!"
"It is a great tragedy not all the young women in the parish conduct themselves as you do."
"So often we do not look because if we looked we should feel obliged to do something."
"It was only a very small part of her that had liked him."
"Not quite. I’m trying to build up in my mind a picture of the kind of person we’re looking for, of the sort of man driven to do such things."
"Do you think perhaps he’s a man—who—doesn’t know himself what he’s done, doesn’t know why, doesn’t even remember afterwards? Then he would be just as ignorant and as afraid as the rest of us?"
"I’m sorry, Charlotte," he said quietly. "It frightens me, too. He must be found, but I am not looking forward to doing it."
"How do you suppose people stay alive, in the rookeries, without a sense of humour?"
"You wouldn’t understand the costermonger, the prostitutes, the dolly-shop owners, but if you did, you’d find them funny sometimes: savage, giving no quarter and expecting none, inventive, greedy, but often funny as well."
"That doesn’t alter it though, does it?" she said bleakly.
"I know you don’t like him, but do you think you could deceive him for long?"
"Because being in love with someone is not the same as knowing them."
"You demand perfect loyalty from us, but feel free to give your own love wherever you like—"
"If you were married you would perhaps understand that men are different. You can’t apply women’s feelings, women’s rules to a man."
"You are not strong, Charlotte," she said viciously. "You are hard. That is why Dominic chose Sarah, and not you!"
"Yes," she lied. "I am concerned that he will hurt her. She is not of his social position, and he will tire of her presently; then she will find her reputation damaged, and have nothing to show for it but a deep hurt to her feelings."
"Of course he won’t! Men of his situation either marry for family reasons, or for money. Emily has neither."
"Of course not! It is weak, contemptible. But that is the way it is."
"Ashworth may imagine he is calling the pace, but I think it will be Emily who will decide whether he marries her or not."
"I think you worry about Emily too much," he observed. "She is far more practical than you credit."
"But surely— if it were no more than that—how will you ever find him? He could be anyone at all!"
"God made woman, as He made man—the weaker vessel, of course, but still the creation of the Almighty."
"Better a limb should be chopped off, than the whole body should become infected and perish!"
"All sin is sin, my dear. The thought is father to the wish, and the wish father to the deed. Therefore the thought itself is evil, and must be plucked out, eradicated like a poisonous weed that will rise and choke the seeds of the Lord’s word in you."
"And you, Charlotte? Do you still love Dominic?"
"Dominic was only a dream. I’m awake now, and you are the first best."