Clouds of Witness

Dowager Dutchess:
[to Peter] Isn't it strange? Of my three children, I always regarded you as the problem one. And now I'm forced to revise my opinion.

Dowager Dutchess:
And as for your sister...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Now Polly's had a rotten show.

Dowager Dutchess:
I don't care what she's had. But when I discover she's warming her thermometer on her hot water bottle to promote a temperature, and has swallowed the entire contents of a bottle of ipecacuanha so that her symptoms become even more convincing...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Mother!

Dowager Dutchess:
It's true.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Are you absolutely certain?

Dowager Dutchess:
My dear boy, she's been throwing the wool over the eyes of all of you! I suppose you call that kind of thing a neurosis or some such nonsense, and coddle it. In my days we called it hysterics and naughtiness, and we knew exactly how to deal with it.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Tonight, Charles and I hold high revel. Tonight he shows me all the bloody footprints.

[Helen starts to protest]

Lord Peter Wimsey:
It's all right, Helen. That's not swearing, that's an adjective of quality.

[the Dowager Duchess goes to support her son in prison]

Helen, Duchess of Denver:
At a time like this! Acting as though she were the mother of some Croyden bank clerk caught dipping into the petty cash.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
I told you you were going to be upset, old girl.

Helen, Duchess of Denver:
I am! Deeply upset.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
By Jove! An emotional outburst from the Ice Queen herself. Never thought I'd live to see the day.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
[Commenting on Helen's outfit] Helen, you look stunning in adversity. They nailed her colors to the mark - a Roman matron to the last!

Freddy Arbuthnot:
Is that in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Not yet, but it will be. Give it another ten years.

Freddy Arbuthnot:
Peter? We're expecting Peter?

Rachel Arbuthnot:
One doesn't expect Peter, Bunny. Either he's all over you when least wanted or knows every pound when he is.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
It's rather a good idea to keep one's crimes in the family. One has certain, far more facilities.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Facts, Bunter, must have facts. When I was a small boy, I always hated facts. Thought they were nasty, hard things, all nobs.

Mervyn Bunter:
Yes, my lord. My old mother always used to say...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Your mother, Bunter? Oh, I never knew you had one. I always thought you just sort of came along already-made, so it were. Oh, excuse me. How infernally rude of me. Beg pardon, I'm sure.

Mervyn Bunter:
That's all right, my lord.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Thank you.

Mervyn Bunter:
Yes indeed, I was one of seven.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
That is pure invention, Bunter, I know better. You are unique. But you were going to tell me about your mater.

Mervyn Bunter:
Oh yes, my lord. My old mother always used to say that facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, and they generally run away.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
By Jove, that's courageous, Bunter. What a splendid person she must be.

Mervyn Bunter:
I think so, my lord.

Dowager Dutchess:
And you, Mary, if you must run off to London, why do it in that unfinished manner, so that I was left without the car, and couldn't catch anything until the midnight train at Northallerton? It's so much better to do things neatly and properly, even stupid things.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
All right, to be serious. How did you two get on last night? Polly, did you tell him you'd done the murder?

Lady Mary Wimsey:
Yes!

Det. Supt. Charles Parker:
It's perfectly hopeless trying to do anything!

Lady Mary Wimsey:
It's true! Your precious case is finished, Peter.

Dowager Dutchess:
You must allow your brother to be the best judge of his own affairs.

Dowager Dutchess:
Mary, would you ring the bell?

[Mary starts to, but Bunter has already entered]

Dowager Dutchess:
Ah, Bunter! It's time for my son's medicine. Ah, he forestalls one's slightest wish. There are times when I find you quite deflating.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
If you're telling me to opt out, now...

Sir Impey Biggs:
It's too late for that. All I am saying is this: that you've got to do a great deal better, and a great deal more swiftly, if the Duke of Denver is not to hang.

[on Mary's ex-fiance, who has shot Peter]

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Yes, you always did find him a bit sickening, didn't you, Mother?

Lady Mary Wimsey:
How can you?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
What?

Lady Mary Wimsey:
At a time like this?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Well, confound it all, he is sickening!

Lady Mary Wimsey:
If you can't be a gentleman, Peter...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Oh, damn it all! Here is a man who, without the slightest provocation, takes a potshot at me, then vamooses leaving me bleeding like a stuck pig! And when, in what seems to me to be jolly mild parliamentary language, I call him a sickening fellow, my own sister says I ain't a gentleman. Well, really, and in my own place, too!

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Well, I think we can say we've made some progress. Even if it's a bit on the negative side.

Sir Impey Biggs:
Negative? Exactly! By heaven, negative indeed! Have you the faintest idea how seriously your activities have succeeded in damaging the case for the defense?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Well, that's a nice thing to say, when we've cleared up such a lot of points for you.

Sir Impey Biggs:
I daresay. Points better left muffled up! Light where there was better darkness!

Lord Peter Wimsey:
But damn it, we only want to get at the truth!

Sir Impey Biggs:
Do you? Well, I don't! I don't care tuppence for the truth. I want a case. It doesn't matter to me who killed Cathcart, provided that I can prove that it wasn't Denver. It's really enough if I can throw reasonable doubt that it was Denver. Here's a client who comes to me with a story of a quarrel, a mysterious revolver, a refusal to produce evidence of his statements, and a totally inadequate and idiotic alibi. I arrange to obfuscate the jury with mysterious footprints, a discrepancy as to time, a young woman with a secret, and a general vague suggestion of something between a burglary and a crime passionel. And here you come! Explaining the footprints, exculpating the unknown man, abolishing the discrepancies, clearing up the motives of the young woman, and most carefully throwing back suspicion to where it rested in the first place.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
I always said the professional advocate was the most amoral person on the face of the earth. I'm certain of it now.

Sir Impey Biggs:
[to the Duke] I'm sorry, Denver, but one member of your family at a time is all that I can deal with, especially when he's as perversely stubborn as you are.

Bunter:
[to Lady Mary] I think your ladyship should take a drop of brandy. This is the 1800 Napoleon brandy, my lady. [She is sniffling heavily] Oh, please don't snort so, and if I may make a suggestion, his lordship woud be greatly distressed if any of this is wasted. Did your lady dine on the way up? [She doesn't respond] Most unwise, my lady, to undertake such a long journey on an empty interior. I shall prepare you an asparagus omelet.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
[after being rescued from a bog pit] What a beastly place.

Jake:
Oh, aye. Not many as falls into Peter's Pot and lives to tell the tale.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Peter's Pot? Well, it nearly potted Peter.

[faints]

Gerald, Duke of Denver:
If you're so dead-set on making a public spectacle of yourself...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Damn it, man, you're the one who's making a public spectacle of himself! It never need have started if it hadn't been for you. Do you think that I enjoy seeing my brother and sister dragged through the courts, reporters all swarming over the place, paragraphs and news bills with your name staring at me from every corner, and the whole ghastly business ending up in a great show in the House of Lords with a lot of people togged up in scarlet and ermine, and all the rest of the damn fool jiggery-pokery?

Gerald, Duke of Denver:
I know you like playing detectives, so if it's games you want...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
My dear Jerry...

Gerald, Duke of Denver:
...you must go and play them elsewhere.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
I'm sorry you find me such an irritating sort of person. I suppose it's hard for you to believe I feel anything, but I do. Seeing you like this, I'll tell you this, old lad... in spite of what you think of me, I am going to get to the bottom of this little mess - even if Bunter and I both perish in the attempt.

Det. Supt. Charles Parker:
Suicide... you know the trouble with this case? There were too many clues.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Indeed. Dozens of people with secrets and elopements barging about all over the place.

Lady Mary Wimsey:
Peter, I hate you.

[Peter laughs]

Helen, Duchess of Denver:
He's the only Duke I know who wears ermine as though it were still on the animal.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
I must say, you're looking jolly scrumptious, Polly. Out to impress someone?

Lady Mary Wimsey:
Me?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Mmm-hmm.

Lady Mary Wimsey:
I don't know what you mean.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Good show, old thing. Keep it up.

[a few minutes later, Bunter announces another visitor]

Lady Mary Wimsey:
Oh well, in that case, perhaps we'd better...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
No, no, no there's no need to buzz off.

Lady Mary Wimsey:
Well, she'll be much happier without us hanging about.

[goes to Charles]

Lady Mary Wimsey:
And besides, I...

Lord Peter Wimsey:
You will be much happier without me hanging about, is that it?

Det. Supt. Charles Parker:
What? I don't know what you mean.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Well, that makes two of you, don't it?

Lord Peter Wimsey:
What would you say, Bunter? A satisfactory conclusion?

Mervyn Bunter:
Yes indeed, my lord. Satisfactory in almost every respect.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
In what respect not satisfactory?

Mervyn Bunter:
Something entirely personal to myself, my lord. There is a saying to the effect, "it is better to journey than to arrive."

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Yes, I feel exactly the same. Only this time it's been a lot more exhausting than any I can remember. Too near home, I suppose.

Mervyn Bunter:
My sentiments exactly, my lord.

Lord Peter Wimsey:
[to Simone] I've traveled 3000 miles to see you, madamoiselle.

Lucius Grant:
[In a plane above the Atlantic] We're past the point of no return, so it's England here we come!

Lord Peter Wimsey:
Thank heaven for that!

[Helen's] misfortune...was to become disagreeable when she was unhappy -- perhaps the heaviest curse that can be laid on man, who is born to sorrow.