- [introduction, Hitchcock is in an armchair with a side table next to him, wearing a Sherlock Holmes cap, and smoking bubbles out of a pipe]
- Alfred Hitchcock: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and Dr. Watson, wherever you are. Tonight's case is er...
- [blows more bubbles]
- Alfred Hitchcock: Tonight's case is called "The Perfect Crime". I'm not sure who it was who said, "A perfect crime is like a perfect marriage - their being perfect depends on your not being caught." Tonight we plan...
- [swats at bubbles in annoyance]
- Alfred Hitchcock: This is why I never take my pipe to bed. If you fall asleep, you could be bubbled to death. And now join me if you will, as we contemplate "The Perfect Crime."
- [afterword, Hitchcock walks into Courtney's living room where the furniture is covered in tarps; he stops and poses at Courtney's trophy cabinet]
- Alfred Hitchcock: I regret to inform you that Courtney did not retain his last trophy very long. He was caught. A charwoman knocked over the precious vase, breaking it into pieces, a few of them identifiable as, ah, bits of Mr. Gregory. You see, the gold fillings of his teeth had resisted the heat of the kiln, but all the good doctors and all the good police couldn't put Mr. Gregory together again. As for the charwoman, she became "the pride of the press." Here is where the real historical significance of the case lies: ever since, cleaning women the world over have been knocking over vases, trying to emulate her success. That's all until next time when we shall be back with another, though imperfect, crime. Good night.
- Charles Courtney: Do you like Brahms, Mr Gregory?
- John Gregory: Ordinairily but not when it turns out to be a death march.
- John Gregory: But tell me, why must the perfect crime necessarily be murder?
- Charles Courtney: Well, is it not the most reprehensible? Human life is what we prize the most, what we do our best to protect. To take a life with a skill that eludes detection is unquestionably the ideal criminal action.
- John Gregory: You make it sound... pleasant.
- Charles Courtney: Surgeons talk of beautiful cases, don't they? That's precisely my attitude. No, if it's to be murder, then it must be the purest kind. Rule out the crime passional, hot blood begets numerous blunders. No, the perfect crime must be a work of art. Like the ceramics I make here in my own workshop, done for arts sake alone, not for gain. There is only one kind of murder that I consider pure. That's the murder of elimination, the murder in which the sole object is to remove the victim from the world.
- Charles Courtney: [about a CPA he once tracked down] He never made a mistake in his life even in long division when he was back at school.
- John Gregory: [He quotes Alice's words] It's funny, she said, you can shoot the heads of all the bottles you like and no one says a word. But if you kill a human snake, they burn you for it.
- Charles Courtney: Some sportsmen decorate their walls with the head of a lion they once shot in Tanganyika or some unfortunate rhino caught sunbathing in the Congo. These, Mr Gregory, are trophies, perfect memories of so very many crimes, but tombstones to the stupidity of criminals.
- John Gregory: What is the empty space there in the centre?
- Charles Courtney: For the perfect crime.
- John Gregory: For some inexplicable reason, maybe because I can't really understand men like you. I've always wanted to learn about you, but it's impossible. Just below that surface of studied courtesy, Mr Courtney, lies a cover and the real Charles Courtney lies beneath that cover that is impervious, untouched and unmoved.
- Charles Courtney: You're being ridiculous.
- John Gregory: You live in a quiet little place of your own, shut off like some lost tribe of aborigines in some forgotten quarter of the globe.