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

by Alan Bradley

When senses of humor were being handed out, my sister had been standing at the tail end of the queue with her snout stuck in a copy of Paradise Lost.

If there’s one thing a girl needs to know to succeed in the world, it’s the ability to turn on the tears at will. Tears are the only known acid that eats away at the male ego, and it’s important to know how to summon them in seconds. Delayed tears are no good: They go off quicker than even the dampest cheeses.

you must’ve had merit badges,” Carl persisted. “A few,” Jeep said. “What were they?” “Plumbing and Ornithology,” Jeep said. “Well, there you go,” Carl said.

In my head I recited the periodic table of elements: one of the chief benefits of being a chemist. One is never bored in the presence of deadly dainties such as arsenic.

I remembered once when I had called Daffy “creepy” to her face, she had replied that the word, in Scotland, denoted the name of the stool the pastor stood on in the pulpit to make himself seem taller. You can never one-up a know-it-all.

I began to have second thoughts almost immediately. Who in their right mind would send a child to handle deadly poison? But then I thought: Why not? There comes a time in every girl’s life when she must be trusted; a time at which she must, even in a small way, be set free.

I was hoping to be asked for my opinion, but I wasn’t. If I had been, I’d have said that any book of more than two hundred and fifty pages without a single mention of chemistry or poisoning was a wicked waste of time.

“It’s a boffo book,” he said. “I read it on the boat coming over. It’s prob’ly the best book I ever read.” “Have you read Tristram Shandy?” Daffy asked. “No.” “I rest my case,” she said.

Daffy had once told me what to do if ever I were accosted by a man: “Kick him in the Casanovas, then run like blue blazes.” I have remarked elsewhere that I didn’t know where the Casanovas were precisely located, so rather than take a chance, I delivered as powerful a kick as I could with the toe of my shoe to his right kneecap.

The condemning to death and execution of a criminal is, I reasoned, the public revenge for a private crime. Private revenge is not permitted, which seems a pity. If it was up to me, anyone who harmed a little girl would be strapped to a bull’s-eye on the south lawn so that anyone who wanted to could take a shot with the archery sets provided free of charge. I shivered at the thought of my own brutality. Surely we were more civilized than that. Surely the better part of our brains had evolved since the Stone Age?

I folded the hot gauze into a pad and applied it to the gash on Undine’s head. “This might sting a little,” I told her, as one always does. It’s a custom that probably goes back beyond the Inquisition, when the torturers were preparing to cut out their victim’s tongue.

I could not sleep. My mind had become a gigantic concrete mixer, churning endlessly away at tons of gray, sloppy speculation that only time could harden into fact.

I faked a sudden sneeze, pulled out my handkerchief, and wiped away the evidence. “Oh, pardon me,” I said. “The sun just came out from behind a cloud.” And it had. “My trigeminal nerve overloaded. It’s not just me: It happens with horses, too.”

“Surprise is the sharpest arrow in the quiver,”