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.

In my experience, nothing is more deeply refreshing than to huddle under a bumbershoot in the rain and the raw fog of a country graveyard.

Bare inches above your head, the downpour drums a military tattoo on the taut black silk as your nose greedily drinks in the invigorating pong of tombstones, wet grass, and ancient moss: a smell that opens doors in your mind you didn’t even know you had.

She said she understood what it was to be lonely, and that I mustn’t feel bad about it; that loneliness wasn’t a sin.

thanked her for her concern but didn’t tell her that I wasn’t being eaten by loneliness. It was lack of love, and that’s no sin either.

As one of my late father’s dearest friends, the vicar, when speaking privately, could be refreshingly direct. “Tea and faith,” he had once said, “conquer all things.”

I hadn’t missed the fact that he put the tea in first place.

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.

My chemical laboratory was my kingdom, and away from it, I was a mere husk, like something shed by some disgusting insect, or the paper wrapping on a sweet.

But as I was saying, I had become aware that there was an “inner me” and an “outer me,” and at the moment I didn’t much care for the outer one. I was only truly myself when I was alone among the glass flasks and retorts in that dear chemical lab in the otherwise abandoned east wing of Buckshaw.

There’s only one way to deal with a persistent pest, which is to remain perfectly silent. Silence is more effective than a thousand swear words.

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. It was once known as the benefit of clergy, by which the ability to read aloud, in Latin, the third verse of Psalm 51 could save you from the gallows.

more greatly wronged than even the victims of crime.” “I shall have to think about that,” I said. I felt as if my brain had had the wind knocked out of it. “We all need to think about that,” Dogger said.

Perhaps each an unusual memento mori: a token to remember the dead. He might have also used them as aide-mémoire, to help him recall the grisly moment when each of them plummeted through the trap.”

“In the words of that excellent Franciscan philosopher John Punch, ‘Things are not to be multiplied without necessity.’ ”

But names are power. As you will recall, the Lord remarked to Jacob, ‘I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.’ ” “That’s interesting,” I said, “but what does it mean?” “It means that when you know a person’s name, you have very great power over them. Very great, very deep power: power even at a cellular level. Or so some believe.”

“Which is why those who forge identities are so careful to ring all the right chimes, so to speak. To be credible, they must choose a surname that hints at money, power, nobility, or luxury goods. In this case, they have gone a little too far and reached for royalty.”

“And in the end, one waits upon the day when our Maker gathers up the parts to restring his puppets and set them dancing in a better world.”

“Do you really believe that, Dogger?” I asked. This was probably the most important question I had ever asked in my brief life. “Some of us believe it,” Dogger said, “and some of us must.”

But sarcasm is wasted on the young. They haven’t yet learned to bleed under such deadly wit.

“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater,” Dogger had once advised me when I scoffed at the idea of communion wafers and sacramental wine being the literal body and blood of Christ. And he was right. Sometimes it pays to listen to one’s soul.

“The making of a pot of tea is a blessing,” Father once told me in a rare moment of revealing his thoughts. “A blessing upon both the one who prepares it and those who drink it. A small sacrament, to be sure, but it must never be done frivolously or unthinkingly.”

“It’s like lending a book, isn’t it, Father?” Daffy had asked, breaking the spell. “Precisely, Daphne,” Father had told her, and I saw her begin to glow with a new, raw pride.

“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?”

The tea had done its work and we were now in that warm, companionable state that others seek at church: bliss and brains—an unbeatable combination. In the church, the graveyard provides the background aroma of eart...

have their office in a churchyard since the smell of the decaying dead is so much more stimulating than ...

In the greenhouse, of course, we have the potting tables to provide that stimulus. No wonder God created us in a garden! I’d bet a shilling that it was actually in a greenhouse but was cr...

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.

knew suddenly how Job must have felt when God killed all his cattle: as if a cork in his heel had been yanked out suddenly, and his lifeblood drained out into the sand.

Each of us, at birth, is given what is sometimes called the pearl of greatest price. It is the one thing that will drive us from the cradle to the grave. Sometimes we choose it and sometimes it is thrust upon us. For some it’s money and for others glory. For some it’s love and for others it’s power. It drives us as surely as water and fire drive the steam engine, and it varies not so much as a particle from birth till death. For me, it was duty. For better or for worse, duty. I had no choice. Do you see?”

needed first to let the hatred boil away, and hatred, I had already learned, can be a slow, slow thing. If love was sugar, hate was lead.

‘Might have’ don’t cobble no cauliflowers. ‘Might have’ don’t cut no rice. ‘Might have’ don’t pluck no chickens.”

am a bright and intelligent girl. I have a kind heart and not too shabby a soul. I once told that to the archbishop of Canterbury. To his face.”

It’s called trust, and it’s often the hardest thing we are called upon to do in our lives.

Uncle Tar’s books were shelved by size, and then by color and then alphabetically, which made a lot of sense to me. In my experience, the visual memory of a book is the one that first comes to mind, followed by the color, then by the title and/or the name of the author. Indexing is a juggling act: a gift possessed by very few. Or at least, so says my sister Daffy.

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.

Someone once said that each new day brings us the gift of a new pair of eyes. I don’t know if that’s true, but I felt it must be so.

you wish to be noted for truthfulness, you must always tell the truth—but not all of it.

Mark Twain: Truth is the most precious thing we have. Economize it.