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

by Alan Bradley

“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?”