James Mason credited as playing...
Maxwell Fleury
- Colonel Whittingham: Ever read a book called, "Crime and Punishment"?
- Maxwell Fleury: No. Why?
- Colonel Whittingham: Well, you should. It's about just this sort of thing. A man who's committed a crime and his relationship with a detective who knows he's committed it, but still can't prove it. There's a - they have a secret together. There's a - deep bond between them. It's rather like a love affair; because, the detective is the only man in the world who understands him - and in his heart, the murderer wants to be found out by the detective.
- David Boyeur: Mr. Fleury speaks as if traditions belong only to him. We have ours too.
- Maxwell Fleury: I'd be the last to deny him his traditions.
- David Boyeur: Which ones, Mr. Fleury? The ones we got on the slave ships - or in the cane fields working like beasts? Or, the ones we have now, the ones we're making every day, despite the slave ships *and* the cane fields?
- Maxwell Fleury: Your father, if I remember correctly, worked on my father's plantation.
- David Boyeur: Till the day he died.
- Maxwell Fleury: He was taken care of, whether he was sick or not, whether he worked or not.
- David Boyeur: That was charity, Mr. Fleury. What we want is equality.
- Hilary Carson: What I want is a drink.
- Maxwell Fleury: [reading from a newspaper] "Presumably they did not know that Julian Fleury's mother, who died in childbirth, was a Jamaican with native ancestry" Is it true?
- Julian Fleury: It's true.
- Maxwell Fleury: What were you lashing out when you tried to slap me? Your own guilt, your betrayal of us?
- Julian Fleury: Betrayal? Your mother never knew?
- Maxwell Fleury: She knew. Didn't you mother?
- Mrs. Fleury: I knew.
- Julian Fleury: But how?
- Mrs. Fleury: An anonymous letter. Came ten years ago.
- Julian Fleury: And you never mentioned it?
- Julian Fleury: I saw no reason to. I wanted to keep things as they were.
- Maxwell Fleury: Faithful wife. Noble mother.
- Julian Fleury: Maxwell, stop it.
- Jocelyn Fleury: How do you expect him to feel? How do you think I feel? To believe that you belong to one kind of a world and then suddenly... when I asked you if there was any reason that I shouldn't marry Euan, you said no.
- Julian Fleury: I said that was no *good* reason.
- Jocelyn Fleury: How can you say that? Euan's heir to a title. Can you picture a black man sitting in the House of Lords if we had a son?
- Julian Fleury: There's no need to exaggerate. My mother was three-quarters white, I've only one-sixteenth colored blood. The chances are your children will be *completely* white.
- Maxwell Fleury: If I were a woman, I'd prefer Carson to Euan Templeton.
- Sylvia Fleury: But, it was Euan all the girls chased after.
- Maxwell Fleury: I've had about as much as I can take from you, and from this island, you understand. Stay away from my wife!
- Hilary Carson: Look here - I'm fed up with idiots! Are you suggesting I...
- Maxwell Fleury: I'm not suggesting anything - I'm just telling you.
- Hilary Carson: Well you can ruddy well un-tell it and apologise. And get this into your stupid skull - I don't make passes at wives of acquaintances and I don't share my women. And even if I did, I wouldn't take something from someone like you with the tarbrush rolled across his face.
- Maxwell Fleury: You seem to know a great deal about him.
- Sylvia Fleury: Well, you know the island. A male, young, white, unmarried, titled, and comparatively rich. Good heavens, what else do you think the girls would talk about? Now, darling, you're not jealous are you?
- Maxwell Fleury: I could.
- Sylvia Fleury: Whatever of?
- Maxwell Fleury: Anybody with all those - virtues. That's the penalty for being so much in love with you.
- Sylvia Fleury: That's sweet.
- Sylvia Fleury: Maxwell, stop it, you'll tear my dress.
- Maxwell Fleury: But, you know, I've never torn a dress of yours.
- [aggressively tears Sylvia's dress]
- Sylvia Fleury: Take me home.
- Maxwell Fleury: Home? Women get bored making love in the same room. A change of scenery helps.
- [aggressively kisses Sylvia]
- Sylvia Fleury: Stop it!
- [he doesn't]
- Maxwell Fleury: Does he still smoke those cigarettes of his?
- Sylvia Fleury: What cigarettes?
- Maxwell Fleury: You remember those fancy gold-tipped ones that he has made up for him in Cairo. Perhaps that's what *I* need to be more successful with my own wife. A special brand of tobacco.
- Maxwell Fleury: What did you buy?
- Sylvia Fleury: A bikini. It's really something, isn't it?
- Hilary Carson: Right. You better rope off the beach, old man, when she wears it.
- Maxwell Fleury: I know what people say. I know what people think. I know what you think. I know what he thinks. I never lived up to the great Fleury name. I might have if I'd gone to Oxford and Eton, like Arthur did. Many things might have been different. But, instead, you sent me to school here with a lot of *colored* brats.
- Maxwell Fleury: I'm supposed to be grateful to be Julian Fleury's son. I'd been better off if I'd been born black!
- [Maxwell's mother rushes up and slaps him]
- Maxwell Fleury: I can see myself walking into the Club. "Anyone for tennis? There's Fleury. He's perfect for mixed doubles. His grandmother was a bit on the dark side, you know."
- Sylvia Fleury: There's some cold lobster in the refrigerator and a bottle of champagne. We could have it upstairs. Wouldn't you like that?
- Maxwell Fleury: I suppose.