Shaun Evans credited as playing...
DS Endeavour Morse
- DS Endeavour Morse: [secretly meeting Singleton] What's all this - bringing me up to London?
- Singleton: [offering a feasible, but untrue, explanation] Two old friends, going to a concert...
- DS Endeavour Morse: But we're not old friends!
- Singleton: And we're not going to a concert.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [speculating on WPC Trewlove's future] A woman in CID. Imagine that!
- DS Endeavour Morse: [dryly] Imagine.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [after Thursday has deliberately covered up Mrs. Dozier's killing of her husband] Why would you do that? You're not God.
- DCI Fred Thursday: God was out. He left me in charge.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Just what is it that you do here? I'm curious.
- Sebastian Fenix: A fatal flaw in cats, Mr. Morse.
- Sebastian Fenix: Life is not a paperback, Mr. Morse. For a policeman with an over-developed sense of right and wrong, it's a bad film with an unhappy ending. One in which the villain gets the girl, the money and the world entire.
- DS Endeavour Morse: And the hero?
- Sebastian Fenix: There's your mistake. Conscience is a negotiable commodity. There are no heroes. No white hats. No black hats. Just shades of green. Money. That's the true universal panacea. Good for anything that ails you.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [discussing his impending retirement] I've had my go. It's your turn now.
- DS Endeavour Morse: I'm not ready.
- DCI Fred Thursday: You were always ready. You just needed someone to tell you.
- DS Endeavour Morse: You've 30 seconds to tell me who you are and what you want, or else I'm leaving.
- Singleton: We're Wardens in Ordinary attached to St Peter ad Vincula.
- DS Endeavour Morse: St Peter in Chains? That's a chapel at the Tower. Thomas More is buried there.
- Louis: Oh, yes. Thomas Cromwell. Anne Boleyn. Lady Jane Grey. The lopped heads of old England. Traitors all.
- Singleton: If you know that much, you know it's a Royal Peculiar. Please.
- DS Endeavour Morse: So you answer only to the Crown.
- Singleton: That's right.
- DS Endeavour Morse: So what do you want?
- Singleton: To help. What else?
- DS Endeavour Morse: With what?
- Singleton: Pfuscher.
- DS Endeavour Morse: And what's in it for you?
- Louis: You should take a look at Sebastian Fenix.
- DS Endeavour Morse: The perfumier?
- Louis: The world-famous multi-millionaire perfumier, playboy and philanthropist.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Why don't you take a look at him?
- Louis: You're the policeman. Every game must be played according to its rules.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Is what happened to Pfuscher in some way connected to Fenix?
- Singleton: He acted as interpreter to Fenix for a while. Fenix has a factory, north of Oxford. We'd be very interested in anything you might pick up.
- Louis: Particularly anything being made in Laboratory 4.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Why don't *you* take a look?
- Louis: Do you love your country?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Do you still beat your wife?
- Singleton: We're on the side of the angels. Quite literally.
- DS Endeavour Morse: I'm not a spy.
- Louis: Neither are we.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Then, what are you?
- Louis: Keepers of the secret flame. Guardians of the realm. Britain's last line of defence.
- DS Endeavour Morse: So, why me?
- Singleton: You're a policeman. You can legitimately look into matters beyond our sphere of influence.
- DS Endeavour Morse: And you can just as legitimately wipe your hands of it if anything goes wrong.
- Louis: Something like that.
- Dorothea Frazil: Isn't your girl a photographer?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Hm.
- Dorothea Frazil: She asked me to sign a book for her. Seems nice.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Which book?
- Dorothea Frazil: My time in Korea. Which I can only say shows excellent taste and discernment.
- Claudine: It's pretty.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Prettier in summer. Sun's gone already. The year's turned. Pretty soon it will be bonfires and hoar frost. Mist'll rise... Winter's on its way.
- Dorothea Frazil: [after being officially prohibited from reporting on the case] A D-notice? Haven't had one of those since the war. What's it all about?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Your guess is as good as mine.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [after Millie has rescued him from a stranger's attempt to strangle him in the Sebastopol Terrace house] What is this place? Who lives here?
- Millie Bagshot: Nobody. It's a safe house.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [fingering his bruised neck] You could have fooled me.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Special Branch came in the early hours. Whatever it is, it's out of our hands. Perhaps it's for the best.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [angry] Best for whom?
- DCI Fred Thursday: All right, Morse.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: I don't care for it any more than you - but such are our orders and it behoves us to follow them. All of us.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Two men are murdered on our ground and that's it?
- DCI Fred Thursday: [with finality] That's it.
- DS Endeavour Morse: And what about the little boy?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Go home. It's Sunday.
- Joan Thursday: You shouldn't drink on an empty stomach.
- DS Endeavour Morse: That's exactly when you should drink.
- Joan Thursday: Drown your sorrows?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Just marinate them a little. That's what they're for isn't it? Sorrows.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Professor Richmond?
- Prof Alexander Richmond: [he can't quite place him] Yes... er... it's...?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Morse.
- Prof Alexander Richmond: [remembering] Of course. Good heavens! Didn't you partner me at the Traveller's once?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Once, yes.
- Prof Alexander Richmond: Not a bad dummy. Lost the grand slam in the final rubber, I remember. The bid was four no trumps and you answered aces - wasn't it?
- DS Endeavour Morse: I couldn't say.
- Prof Alexander Richmond: Your mistake, you see. Four no trumps is not always Blackwood. Well, this is a pleasant surprise. Sherry?
- DS Endeavour Morse: [finding Claudine "tidying up"] Bit late for spring-cleaning, isn't it?
- Claudine: [actually about to pack before leaving] Well, you don't have to be a policeman all the time. Sometimes things are just what they look like.