Dana Andrews credited as playing...
Det. Lt. Mark McPherson
- Mark McPherson: I must say, for a charming, intelligent girl, you certainly surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes.
- Mark McPherson: Nice little place you have here, Mr. Lydecker.
- Waldo Lydecker: It's lavish, but I call it home.
- Mark McPherson: Were you in love with Laura Hunt, Mr. Lydecker? Was she in love with you?
- Waldo Lydecker: Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she'd ever met. I was in complete accord with her on that point. She thought me also the kindest, the gentlest, most sympathetic man in the world.
- Mark McPherson: Did you agree with her there, too?
- Waldo Lydecker: McPherson, you won't understand this, but I tried to become the kindest, gentlest, the most sympathetic man in the world.
- Mark McPherson: Have any luck?
- Waldo Lydecker: Let me put it this way: I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors' children devoured by wolves.
- Waldo Lydecker: Have you ever been in love?
- Mark McPherson: A doll in Washington Heights once got a fox fur outta me.
- Bessie Clary: I ain't afraid of cops. I was brought up to spit whenever I saw one.
- Mark McPherson: OK, go ahead and spit if that'll make you feel better.
- Mark MacPherson: On Saturday when our men went to the hotel to tell you that Laura Hunt was dead you seemed sincerely shocked.
- Shelby Carpenter: I was. I hadn't expected that mistake.
- Mark MacPherson: But you had your alibi ready no matter who was dead.
- Mark McPherson: [about the list of suspects] You know you are on the list too.
- Waldo Lydecker: Good. It would insult me to be overlooked.
- Mark McPherson: When a dame gets killed, she doesn't worry about how she looks.
- Waldo Lydecker: Will you stop calling her a dame?
- Waldo Lydecker: Look around. Is this the home of a dame? Look at her.
- Mark McPherson: Not bad.
- Waldo Lydecker: Jacoby was in love with her when he painted it... But he never captured her vibrance, her warmth.
- Waldo Lydecker: Will you please stop dawdling with that infernal puzzle? It's getting on my nerves.
- Mark McPherson: I know, but it keeps me calm.
- Mark McPherson: Why did you say they played Brahms's First and Beethoven's Ninth at the concert Friday night? They changed the program at the last minute and played nothing but Sibelius.
- Shelby Carpenter: I suppose I should have told you in the first place. You see, I'd been working on that advertising campaign with Laura. Well, we'd been working so hard, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I didn't hear a note at the concert. I fell asleep.
- Waldo Lydecker: Next he'll produce photographic evidence of his dreams.
- Shelby Carpenter: I know it sounds suspicious, but I'm resigned to that by now. I'm a natural-born suspect just because I'm not the conventional type.
- Laura Hunt: It was a terrible shock, poor darling.
- Mark McPherson: Don't tell me you're in love with him too?
- Shelby Carpenter: Look here fella, you're not to talk that way to Miss Hunt.
- Mark McPherson: Shut up.
- Waldo Lydecker: [Music starts playing] Would you mind turning that off?
- Mark McPherson: Why? Don't you like it?
- Shelby Carpenter: It was one of Laura's favorites. Not exactly classical, but sweet.
- Waldo Lydecker: Haven't you any sense of privacy?
- Mark McPherson: Murder victims have no claim to privacy.
- Waldo Lydecker: Have detectives who buy portraits of murder victims a claim to privacy?
- Shelby Carpenter: Well, I rather thought you'd want to ask me some questions.
- Mark McPherson: Oh, yes. What did they play at the concert Friday night?
- Shelby Carpenter: Oh, Brahms's First and Beethoven's Ninth.
- Mark McPherson: Haven't you seen the papers? Where have you been?
- Laura Hunt: Up in the country. I don't get a newspaper.
- Mark McPherson: Haven't you got a radio?
- Laura Hunt: It was broken.
- Waldo Lydecker: I object to you prying into Laura's letters... especially those from me.
- Mark McPherson: Why? Yours are the best in the bunch.
- Waldo Lydecker: Thanks. But I didn't write them to you.