Subject: Thwarting Gossip
Quote: And all this with a beady eye on me to see how I reacted to these suggestions. Fortunately long association with Caroline has led me to preserve an impassive countenance, and to be ready with small noncommittal remarks.
On this occasion I congratulated Miss Ganett on not joining in ill-natured gossip. Rather a neat counterattack, I thought. It left her in difficulties, and before she could pull herself together, I had passed on.
Character: Dr. James Sheppard’s narrative
Chapter/Story: 2—Who’s Who in King’s Abbot
Book Title/Copyright: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926Subject: Gossip
Quote: “[T]here is nothing more cruel than talk, and there is nothing more difficult to combat. When people say things behind your back there is nothing you can refute or deny, and the rumours go on growing and growing, and no one can stop them.”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 6—“The Thumb Mark of St. Peter”
Book Title/Copyright: The Tuesday Club Murders, 1928 Subject: Gossip
Quote: “Talking scandal, as you say—well, it is done a good deal. And people are very down on it—especially young people. My nephew…has said some most scathing things about taking people’s characters away without any kind of proof—and how wicked it is, and all that. But what I say is that none of these young people ever stop to think. They really don’t examine the facts. Surely the whole crux of the matter it this: How often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true! And I think if…they really examined the facts they would find that it was true nine times out of ten! That’s really just what makes people so annoyed about it.”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 10—“A Christmas Tragedy”
Book Title/Copyright: The Tuesday Club Murders, 1928 Subject: Gossip
Quote: “Dear Vicar…you are so unworldly. I’m afraid that, observing human nature for as long as I have done, one gets not to expect very much from it. I daresay idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn’t it?”
Character: Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 2
Book Title/Copyright: Murder at the Vicarage, 1930Subject: Gossip, value of
Quote: I don’t hold with gossiping about my cases. On the other hand, it’s my experience that it’s often very hard to get the truth out of the relatives, and until you know the truth you’re often working in the dark and doing no good. Of course, when there’s a doctor in charge, it’s different. He tells you what it’s necessary for you to know.
Character: Nurse Amy Leatheran’s narrative
Chapter/Story: 6 – First Evening
Book Title/Copyright: Murder in Mesopotamia, 1935Subject: Scandalmonger
Quote: “People call her [Miss Marple] a scandalmonger,” said Mrs. Bantry, “but she isn’t really.”
“Just a low opinion of human nature?”
“You could call it that.”
Character: Mrs. Dolly Bantry and Adelaide Jefferson
Chapter/Story: 14
Book Title/Copyright: The Body in the Library, 1942Subject: Gossip
Quote: “I wouldn’t tell a soul.”
“People who use that phrase are always the last to live up to it.”
Character: Mrs. Dolly Bantry and Miss Jane Marple
Chapter/Story: 16
Book Title/Copyright: The Body in the Library, 1942Subject: Gossip
Quote: “The village gossip, it is based always, always on the relations of the sexes. If a man poisons his wife in order to travel to the North Pole or to enjoy the peace of a bachelor existence—it would not interest his fellow villagers for a minute! It is because they are convinced that the murder has been committed in order that the man may marry another woman that the talk grows and spreads. That is elemental psychology.”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: “The Lernean Hydra”
Book Title/Copyright: The Labors of Hercules, 1947
Subject: Rumors
Quote: “There is nothing so intangible, so difficult to pin down, as the source of a rumor.”
Character: M. Hercule Poirot
Chapter/Story: “The Lernean Hydra”
Book Title/Copyright: The Labors of Hercules, 1947
Subject: Eavesdroppers
Quote: “Eavesdroppers…usually hear only a portion of what goes on and frequently get the whole thing wrong owing to supplying the missing details from their own fertile imaginations.”
Character: David Hunter
Chapter/Story: Book Two—4
Book Title/Copyright: There is a Tide, 1948
