The page numbers are from “Lord Peter” published by Harper & Row. The excerpts are copyrighted 1972 by Harper & Row.
375 ~ don’t go all Eddington on me
Arthur Eddington (1882-1944): a scientist who made important contributions to the theory of general relativity. Among other discoveries, his photographs of the sun during a total eclipse gave the first confirmation of Einstein’s theory that gravity will bend the path of light when it passes near a massive star.
Fitzgerald contractions and coefficients of spherical curvature
References to the theory of relativity
385 ~ He’s like the Queen of Hearts in Alice — he never executed nobody, you know
A reference to “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. The Queen would call for people’s executions, but none were ever carried out.