Thursday, June 18, 2020

That guilty look

    Lady Lacklander stared at him like a basilisk. She had a habit of blinking slowly, her rather white eyelids dropping conspicuously like shutters: a slightly reptilian habit that was disconcerting. She blinked twice in this manner at Alleyn, and said, "What are you getting at, my dear Roderick? I hope you won't finesse too elaborately. Pray, tell us what you want."
    "Certainly. I want to know if, when I arrived, you were discussing Sir Harold Lacklander's memoirs."
    He knew by their very stillness that he had scored. It struck him, not for the first time, that people who have been given a sudden fright tend to look alike; a sort of homogeneous glassiness overtakes them.

(from Scales of Justice, by Dame Ngaio Marsh)

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