Crime has a color

 "I'd hate to touch anything in here," I said. Patrrick was putting on a pair of soft cotton gloves. "If I were you I'd be one of those detectives that does everything by psychology," I said. Patrick said nothing. He was already starting a swift methodical search of everything in the room, beginning with the bed, lifting its covers and sheets, running gloved fingers over the pillows and the ancient mattress, eyeing the rusty springs, then put it together again so that it looked just as it did in the first place. I stood off, and each second hated the whole business more. "I'll do the psychology part," I said. "See that watermelon pink comb on the dresser? If vice has a color, it's watermelon pink. She done it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

Catercornered

 "Our table was a long one in the corner catercornered from the bar." (from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I was surprised when I came across Crane's usage of this word, because it was totally unfamiliar to me. Here in South Logan County we would say "cattycornered."

On the Grammarist website, I found two more options: kittycornered and caddycornered. Which of these you use is entirely a matter of regional preference. However:

"The term was originally catty-corner, which comes from the French word quatre, meaning four. When English speakers got their paws on quatre, it became cater, used to showcase the four spots on a die or the four legs of a beast. Or, in this case, the corners of four city blocks meeting. Eventually, cater-cornered became a term for something positioned diagonally from something else, like the opposite corners on a square die. Then, cater-cornered got clipped to catty-corner, kitty-corner and caddy-corner."

Just leave those dishes alone!

 Ernest Fabian, infallibly punctilious, went around to the front door. And Patrick Abbgott, who you'd think would have been detecting on all cylinders just then, said, "While you hold the villain at bay, Jeanie, I'll start doing the dishes."

I threw him one of my most meaningful looks. In the first place I don't like men who voluntarily do dishes. I can only say in his favor that though he started them at once he did so untidily. Like Peg, I do want to be fair.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

I never tried to hang myself

     I said, "Why wouldn't she tie the rope itself directly around her neck?"

    "Don't ask me," Bill said.

    Patrick himself, mind you, answered it from where he sat, while he kept his eyes on the glass which he was moving slowly over the rope. "Suicides by hanging for some reason often try to make the ordeal easier by tying a soft scarf or handkerchief around the throat."

    "But why?"

    "Apparently they think it will make it hurt less."

    "Does it?"

    "I don't know," Patrick said impatiently. "I never tried it."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

You men do your jobs!

 "I don't this is suicide at all. I am quite sure that Earnest Fabian found out that Ida was gossiping about Mrs. Lake'a death and so got scared and murdered her. Even if it were suicide it makes me furious," she declared. "I mean, if Fearheiley had found Mrs. Lake hanging by her neck I don't doubt that he would have called it throat trouble and certified it as due to natural causes, but since Ida's a harmless little colored girl, just to protect themselves they drag in that idiotic Norman Dawes and go through the motions of an inquest, with everything cut and dried in advance. I mean, nobody wants to bother seriously because it's only Ida Raymond. Now, don't you let them get away with it, Bill. You, either, Pat."

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

How to be popular

 He arrived in twenty minutes, looking very satisfactory in gray herringbone, a white shirt, and a blue tie. He fitted right in. Said just the right things in the right way, and not too many of them. Turned on the charm. People who say charm is a sign of a weak character don't know Patrick Abhott. I suppose if you want to enchant people the thing to do is to do nothing casually. Or do something as though it were nothing - such as sitting in late on a poker game and promptly magnetizing the chips. That hooked the man. The girls tumbled because he was lean, tall, looked western and hard to get.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)

The trouble with funerals

     "Lucky you took along Toby, the celebrated feline flatfoot. Love, Pat," he wired back three days later, by which time Mrs. Claribel Fabian Lake had been stowed in the Fabian vault in the Elm Hill cemetery.

    For a while the body had made news. There had been a private funeral, for one thing, the first ever held in Elm Hill. And before that people talked because the body had been taken to St. Louis for embalming, and when it was brought back the coffin stood in the parlor under a blanket of orchids and gardenias, and, so far as anyone heard, was not opened. Ernest went to some trouble to explain to people that his cousin had a horror of being looked at after death. Which was all right, except that she had done plenty of looking herself, having been a great one to go to funerals, and people didn't like it. Funerals are rather communal in Elm Hill. To be told not to send flowers and that the funeral would be private made us feel snubbed.

(from The Golden Box, by Frances Crane)