Quotes

Lord Peter: Curious, isn’t it, that when you’re dead any stranger can come and snoop round your private affairs—see how much you cut up for and who your lady friends were, and all that. Yes. Not at all nice. Horrid lack of privacy, what? (194)

Lord Peter: You know Glasgow, where the accent’s so strong that even Scotsmen faint when they hear it. (195)

The gentleman, rather curley in the nose and fleshy about the eyelids, nevertheless came under Mr Chesterton’s definition of a nice Jew, for his name was neither Montagu nor McDonald, but Nathan Abrahams. (197)

Maggie: An’ Jock said, “Hoots, wumman, dinna fash yersel’. There’ll be nae mair burglars the nicht, wi’ the fricht we’ve gied ‘em.” (205)

"The Piscatorial Farce
of the Stolen Stomach"

The page numbers are from "Lord Peter" published by Harper & Row. The excerpts are copyrighted 1972 by Harper & Row.

191 ~ How about a bit of brekker?
Slang for breakfast.

193 ~ pushed him off among the Sassenachs
An ancient derogatory term for the English that was derived from the Gaelic word for Saxon. The word is still used today but in a jocular way. This headline was found on the BBC News Web site about Scottish soccer fans' support for the English World Cup team: "Tartan Army goes soft on Sassenachs."

(Contributed by Mary Butler)

Writer to the Signet
A solicitor who works at the Supreme Court of Scotland.

201 ~ manuscript of Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet, born around 84 BCE and died possibly around 54 BCE. He's known primarily for his love poetry.

conducting a knock-out
An auction scam. Before the event, members of a bidding ring hold a private sale, known as the knockout, to decide who will buy the object that the ring has secured. The difference between the price realized in this private sale and the price paid by the ring in the public auction is divided, on the basis of a linear sharing rule, among the members. These side-payments provide an incentive for the ring members to bid higher than they would have in an identical public auction. As a consequence, neither the realized price in the private sale nor the total payments of the winner are unbiased estimates of the price the item would have fetched in the public auction in the absence of collusion.

202 ~ missal
From the Latin word Missa meaning Mass, this the book which contains the prayers said by the priest at the altar as well as all that is officially read or sung in connection with the offering of the holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the ecclesiastical year.

206 ~ Potts fracture
Lord Peter was in error. A Potts fracture is a general name for a variety of fractures and fracture-dislocations around the ankle, not the knee.

208 ~ patella
A small rounded moveable bone situation in a tendon in front of the knee joint. Also known as the kneecap