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In The Cradle Will Fall by Mary Higgins Clark:

when he dropped her off that night he'd said,''you have the loveliest blue eyes I've ever had the pleasure of looking into.I don't think a twelve-year age difference is too much,do you ,Kathleen?''

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I'm wondering why is the past perfect used after the simple past? wouldn't make more sense to say: when he'd dropped her off that night he said '...'?

edit:sorry for the lack of context-a new member-

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  • Please edit to tell about where you found this. It might be that it's simply an unreliable source. Meanwhile, I'd say a bigger problem is that there are two different antecedents to "he," making it confusing.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:25
  • no it's from a novel .just changed the subjects to clarify
    – foreignLearner
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:38
  • Please use the "Edit" button to provide more of the context and which novel. I'm voting to close the question as lacking clarity and detail for now. There are many works that are hastily written and don't serve as good models of usage.
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Mar 15 at 17:46
  • yes already done ,thank you for the reply hope it's clear now?
    – foreignLearner
    Commented Mar 15 at 18:18

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In the sentence "when he dropped her off that night he'd said," the past perfect ("he'd said") is used to indicate an action that occurred before another action in the past. It implies that he had said something before the moment when he dropped her off. Maybe the conversation took place in a car. This construction helps to establish the sequence of events, indicating that the speech happened before the act of dropping her off.

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  • yes indeed there is a discussion before this sentence.so basically the author by using the past perfect ('he'd said') it's like telling us that there is already something said by this man before his next reply?
    – foreignLearner
    Commented Mar 15 at 19:59

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