- Marcus X: It is well to be careful who we designate an immigrant. The black man has been here a lot longer than the Angle, the Saxon, the Jute... the Norman, the Huguenot. Long before many of your forefathers walked this "green and pleasant land", it was the Nubian who stood watch on Hadrian's Wall. The motion before this esteemed house calls for all settled immigrants to be returned to their ancestral lands. So, that being the case, I have to say,
- Marcus X: [to Charity Mudford, Lady Bayswater] "After you".
- DCI Fred Thursday: In and out of each others' beds and at it like knives, according to Mrs. Bright; no wonder the upper classes are obsessed with pedigree.
- Lady Bayswater: [talking of her late stepdaughter's personal life] She'd been engaged. In the manner of the public lavatory at Victoria Station - often and for short periods.
- Sam Thursday: [upset at Jean Ward's death] I should have been watching her.
- DS Jim Strange: You haven't got eyes in your arse.
- Hazel Radowicz: You can't call me a racialist, not by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, I went to see Sammy Davis Jr. in "Golden Boy" at the London Palladium only three months back. I think that speaks volumes.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [reacting angrily to Lady Bayswater's remarks about World War II] The unpleasantness, as you call it, cost me six years of my life and untold millions far more!
- DS Jim Strange: [to Farridge, after the latter has been asked a long-winded question by Morse about his "personal and professional relationship" with the dead girl] What DS Morse is asking is: were you knocking her off?
- Lady Bayswater: [angry at being interrogated by police] Why should I tell you people anything? Another time, another place, I could have had both of you shot! Just like that - snap of my fingers!
- DS Endeavour Morse: [unmoved] Well, that was then. This is now. If you'd like to see a penny of your stepdaughter's inheritance, you will co-operate with us fully. Is that clear?
- DS Endeavour Morse: They say you're never so alive as when you're close to death. Well, maybe the reverse is true.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [noting Trewlove's black eye] Constable Trewlove, good heavens! What happened to you?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Yesterday's public disorder, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Well, bruised or no, your ready smile brightens our drab walls with much-needed vim and youthful freshness.
- DS Jim Strange: What happened to you last night? Never came home. This Frenchy piece, is it? What's her line, then?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Photo-journalist.
- DS Jim Strange: Figures.
- DS Endeavour Morse: How's that?
- DS Jim Strange: Well, let's face it, with you it was never going to be Doreen from the corner shop, was it? Bit of all right, is she?
- DS Endeavour Morse: I suppose. She's just a girl.
- DS Jim Strange: Just a girl? You want to leave some of that for the rest of us. Claudine... that blondie one... the way you've been filling in your dance card, you'd think rationing was coming in.
- DS Endeavour Morse: She's good company.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [describing the prescription drugs found on the dead girl] The cumulative effect is to leave one numb.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: To what?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Life.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Her stepmother's Lady Bayswater.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Charity Mudford?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Mm. I saw her at the debating society yesterday.
- DCI Fred Thursday: What do you make to her?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Well, she's got guts, I'll give her that. When you know everyone in the room would have liked to have seen you hanged, it takes a certain amount of sangfroid to smile back.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Or just a brass neck. It's a wonder she can show her face at all.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Well, she seems pretty unrepentant. Defiant, even. Did Hitler really dance at their wedding, do you think?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Unlikely. But they did stop off at Berchtesgaden for a few days on the way back from their honeymoon.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Why did she come back to England?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Who knows? Maybe we all come home in the end. Did you see Sam?
- DS Endeavour Morse: He's going to be fine. He's in the clear.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Comes to the army, nobody's ever in the clear, only the dead.
- Marcus X: [about Jean Ward] She was a beautiful soul. Had she lived, her future would have been as bright as her past was shadowed.
- Jean Ward: [kissing Sam Thursday] You are sweet, soldier boy. I know what you want. But I'm spoken for.
- Joan Thursday: [when Strange releases her from custody at the police station without charge, following her arrest at a protest] I was there.
- DS Jim Strange: No. You weren't. And you weren't here, neither.
- Joan Thursday: I've given my name and address.
- DS Jim Strange: You let me worry about that.
- Lt. Col. Mad Jack McDuff: You'll take a dram for the road?
- [Door closes]
- Maj. Coward: I'm done, Mac.
- Lt. Col. Mad Jack McDuff: Oh, you're poor company, Mungo. Very poor. You never used to be such a dull companion. Well, go, if you're going. Prisoner and escort? Is that it? Go to your bed, man. You've not the tits for a wet nurse. I'm for a turn around the square.
- [Door opens]
- Lt. Col. Mad Jack McDuff: Get some air.
- [Door closes]
- Col. Champion: If you've ever wondered what a hero looks like, you've just met one. Colonel McDuff is the bravest man I ever saw.
- DS Endeavour Morse: What's the matter with him?
- Col. Champion: Korea, Imjin River. 4,000 of ours against 27,000 of theirs. It's a night action. Close quarters, wave after wave. A third of the battalion were killed or wounded, including Mad Jack McDuff, who took a mortar round. When the order came to fall back, he stayed behind to give the rest of us a chance. Had two years in a Chinese prison camp. If he drinks too much and sleeps with the light on, then, so be it. He's earned the right.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Yeah, but all the same...
- Col. Champion: No, Sergeant Morse, there's no "all the same" about it. The regiment takes care of its own.
- Barker: I was very fond of her in my way.
- DCI Fred Thursday: What way was that, Mr Barker?
- Barker: One that knows its place and proper station, Chief Inspector.
- DCI Fred Thursday: But there was no love lost between her and her stepmother?
- Barker: I'm afraid I couldn't speak to that, sir.
- DCI Fred Thursday: It's people make something what it is. Not the name it's called by.
- Maj. Coward: Thanks. And as long as the colours remain, and there's one man left to see they don't fall to shame, then a regiment never truly dies.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Anything?
- DCI Fred Thursday: All quiet on the Western. The word is out for Cromwell Ames from here to Brum and all points else. Not a peep. Not a whisper.
- DS Endeavour Morse: What about Eddie Nero?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Lying low. If there is a term for it, it's "gone underground".
- DS Endeavour Morse: Lull before the storm, maybe?