The Casebook Points to Murder, Explained：in a jiffy

What's really going on

Up to now the hauntings have been testimony and atmosphere; the casebook turns them into evidence. The séance said that Carmel was murdered, and Dr. Rudd's handwriting supplies the means: a patient left in the cold, a nurse warned, and then, within hours, a death. The doctor's own words do the accusing — "Found traces of snow on the floor" and "Patient dead" — and when he notes that he used the phrase "criminal negligence", the modern reader hears murder. Scott's dry joke that Rudd's handwriting makes him 200 years old keeps the scene from turning grim, but the two men know what they have found. By the end Roderick can say plainly that Miss Holloway "murdered Carmel, in a quiet, ladylike way." The casebook also shifts the danger: the commander collapses, and the threat moves from the house to the people closest to it.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• A snow trace in a casebook becomes the scene's sharpest clue.
• In a jiffy reassures while the doctor keeps working.
• Be apt to marks a habit, not a single event.
• Lizzie's threat to die in bed is superstition as black comedy.

発音のポイント

• to '11 — To reduces to t' before the year numbers.
• right in a jiffy — Link right in a; keep jiffy light and quick.
• stiff with fright — Stiff runs into with and the t in fright often drops.