Quotes from Alys Clare

They have eliminated Mrs Sullivan, Miss Henshaw and Mrs Philpott, for now at least

The Company knew all about poisons.

the drowned Enid Stibbins, Ernest's first wife

I had the weird sensation that I had stepped through a veil, and passed unwittingly from one realm into another …

He was nearly home, and he was experiencing in full the phenomenon of something unpleasant becoming far more so when one need not endure it much longer.

Then suddenly I wasn't standing frozen in some dim and dank room hidden away at the back of an inn, I was thundering back along the twisting passages, Raphe Wymer forgotten, Francis Heron forgotten, magic mirrors, supernatural apparitions and strange, alarming visions forgotten, driven out by the one imperative thought forcing me on: find Celia and get her to safety.

We do not care what our enemies and those we despise may think of us, Hrype thought as he lowered his eyes before the onslaught. What rips us apart is when we are attacked by those we love.

Grief, she learned, had many faces and all of them hurt.

It seemed that some part of my battling soul remained my own. For slowly, as if I was wading through soft, wet, sucking sand, I began to fight back. I threw myself against the fear, forcing it into submission. And as a small amount of daylight cleared amid the blackness, I recognized this for what it was. I'd just been attacked. And instantly reason returned.

Brought in three or four references to Fallen Women

for I did make mistakes and sometimes a body would be despoiled. I even had to throw one that was too far gone into the river.

But all at once I realized that my feet were cold.' I paused, for the alarming power of that moment was still uncomfortable, even in memory. 'I looked at the candles in their lanterns, and the top third had burned away. Somebody, somehow, seemed to have put me into a trance.

scolding look. 'Mistress Celia and her companion only arrived home a few minutes before

it struck me with the force of certainty that I wasn't the only one of us to be affected this way: that Theo was feeling it too, and this was why he was so cross. And Jonathan? Was he too infected with this deadly inertia? And where was it coming from?