Sublime

“And how much did you charge her for that?” “A gentleman never tells.” The truth is, I hadn’t charged her anything. Brown always said I was too soft to be a detective.

“I’ve seen those well-dressed gentlemen do things that would make you faint to hear of them.” “I never faint,” Amelia said indignantly. Rohan’s smile was a flash of white in the shadowed interior of the carriage.

Another enduring name for the force as a whole is of course the Old Bill, originally a cartoon character of the First World War who was portrayed as a grumbling Cockney soldier with a walrus moustache. The ‘police’ meaning emerged when the character, this time wearing police uniform, appeared in posters during the Second World War giving advice on

some of that old grandma sass

Disgruntled at having to leave his bed in the middle of the night, Felbrigg came down to his study with a dressing robe thrown over his nightclothes. With his ginger whiskers, short, spindly build, and the flaccid nightcap with a tasseled end dangling over the back of his head, he looked like an elf. An irate elf.

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt the sloth, and cried, ‘Jack, you have debauched my sloth.’