What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust (Flavia de Luce, #11)

by Alan Bradley

The greatest minds in the world are often cranky when they first awaken in the morning, and mine is no exception. If I am to ascend above the ordinary, I require solitude the way a balloon needs helium.

“Missed all the excitement, did you?” she asked. I shrugged. “Death of a minor civil servant. Sounds like a Ngaio Marsh novel, doesn’t it? Or an Agatha Christie. Something green and slim from Smith’s to read on the train.”

“Who would want to kill a man like that?” I asked. “It’s really quite extraordinary, isn’t it?” Daffy said. Daffy was always saying things like “It’s really quite extraordinary,” when I would have said, “Well, I’ll be bumfuddled!” It’s a matter of taste, I suppose.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how sadness is first detected by the nose? One would expect the eyes to lead the way, but it’s invariably the nose that triggers the earliest alarm. Sadness is much like smoke, I’ve decided: an odor raised at the very doorstep of the brain.

I had to give the child credit. If she couldn’t pronounce the word, it meant she had read it somewhere. According to Daffy, there is a grace that can be attained only from reading the printed page. It is a grace that must be acknowledged, no matter what.

“You must forgive my enthusiasm,” he said. “Enthusiasm begs no forgiveness,”

He placed the scrapbook on a table and opened it gently. “Fragile,” he said. “Old newspaper reminds us vividly how close we are to dust.”

Such sudden insight could be handled only in small quantities.

“I feel as if we’re going round in circles,” I said to Dogger. “We haven’t even seen the victim. We haven’t access to the evidence except a quarter teaspoon of splatter and some dolls. We’re working at a great disadvantage.” “Do you think so?” Dogger asked. “The days of village crimes being solved by dotty old ladies on tricycles are almost over, save for the occasional Agatha Christie at Christmas. The man in a white lab coat with a microscope is the new Sir Lancelot. Science has overthrown both native wit and the tingle of spinster intuition, so that you are, Miss de Luce, as the Americans say, ‘sitting in the catbird seat.’ ” “Do you really think so, Dogger? If that’s true, drawbacks have become doorways. But perhaps I was reasoning ahead of the facts. Didn’t Sherlock Holmes warn against that?” “ ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts,’ ” Dogger quoted. “ ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain.’ ” “Do you read Sherlock Holmes, Dogger?” “Of course,” he said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

I looked into her faded blue eyes and recoiled almost physically. I had to brace myself. Their depths were indescribable: beyond compare. In her eyes were other worlds and other times. The past was still alive in her! I could see it! In those pale blue irises were births, deaths, and loves; successes and failures; tragedies and comedies; and, yes, hates. I had never seen anything like it, and in a way, I hoped I never would again. It was a kind of nakedness I could not yet understand. The nakedness of age.

“Jeep’s what we call laconic. That means he’s a man of few words. Aren’t you, Jeep?” “If you say so,” Jeep said. Carl laughed. “See what I mean? But it’s okay. Loquaciousness is frowned upon in the military. Isn’t it, Jeep?” “If you say so,” Jeep said.

There are moments you know you will remember until the sun and all the stars burn out, and this was one of them. Sometimes we don’t appreciate, or even realize at the time, our most cherished moments, so that when we do, we do so with regret.

Characters in fiction must remain believable. It is not so in real life.”