Clouds of Witness (TV Mini Series)

Episode #1.3 (1972)

Ian Carmichael: Lord Peter Wimsey

Photos 

Quotes 

• [on Mary's ex-fiance, who has shot Peter] 

  Lord Peter Wimsey : Yes, you always did find him a bit sickening, didn't you, Mother?

  Lady Mary Wimsey : How can you?

  Lord Peter Wimsey : What?

  Lady Mary Wimsey : At a time like this?

  Lord Peter Wimsey : Well, confound it all, he is sickening!

  Lady Mary Wimsey : If you can't be a gentleman, Peter...

  Lord Peter Wimsey : Oh, damn it all! Here is a man who, without the slightest provocation, takes a potshot at me, then vamooses leaving me bleeding like a stuck pig! And when, in what seems to me to be jolly mild parliamentary language, I call him a sickening fellow, my own sister says I ain't a gentleman. Well, really, and in my own place, too!

• Lord Peter Wimsey : All right, to be serious. How did you two get on last night? Polly, did you tell him you'd done the murder?

  Lady Mary Wimsey : Yes!

  Det. Supt. Charles Parker : It's perfectly hopeless trying to do anything!

  Lady Mary Wimsey : It's true! Your precious case is finished, Peter.

  Dowager Dutchess : You must allow your brother to be the best judge of his own affairs.

• Lord Peter Wimsey : If you're telling me to opt out, now...

  Sir Impey Biggs : It's too late for that. All I am saying is this: that you've got to do a great deal better, and a great deal more swiftly, if the Duke of Denver is not to hang.

• Lord Peter Wimsey : Well, I think we can say we've made some progress. Even if it's a bit on the negative side.

  Sir Impey Biggs : Negative? Exactly! By heaven, negative indeed! Have you the faintest idea how seriously your activities have succeeded in damaging the case for the defense?

  Lord Peter Wimsey : Well, that's a nice thing to say, when we've cleared up such a lot of points for you.

  Sir Impey Biggs : I daresay. Points better left muffled up! Light where there was better darkness!

  Lord Peter Wimsey : But damn it, we only want to get at the truth!

  Sir Impey Biggs : Do you? Well, I don't! I don't care tuppence for the truth. I want a case. It doesn't matter to me who killed Cathcart, provided that I can prove that it wasn't Denver. It's really enough if I can throw reasonable doubt that it was Denver. Here's a client who comes to me with a story of a quarrel, a mysterious revolver, a refusal to produce evidence of his statements, and a totally inadequate and idiotic alibi. I arrange to obfuscate the jury with mysterious footprints, a discrepancy as to time, a young woman with a secret, and a general vague suggestion of something between a burglary and a crime passionel. And here you come! Explaining the footprints, exculpating the unknown man, abolishing the discrepancies, clearing up the motives of the young woman, and most carefully throwing back suspicion to where it rested in the first place.

  Lord Peter Wimsey : I always said the professional advocate was the most amoral person on the face of the earth. I'm certain of it now.