A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce #3)

by Alan Bradley

Now the grove would be hidden by the tall elder bushes that grew along the river’s bank. It was too late in the season to see, and to inhale the delicious scent of, the elder flowers. Their white blossoms, like a horde of Japanese parasols, would have turned brown and vanished with the rains of June. Perhaps more cheerful was the thought that the purplish-black elderberries which took their place would soon be hanging in perfectly arranged clusters, like a picture gallery of dark bruises.

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind, the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers, for instance, or oatmeal. Then, when the fugitive word was least expecting it, I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it, catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness. “Thought-stalking,” I called the technique, and I was proud of myself for having invented it.

It always surprises me after a family row to find that the world outdoors has remained the same. While the passions and feelings that accumulate like noxious gases inside a house seem to condense and cling to the walls and ceilings like old smoke, the out-of-doors is different. The landscape seems incapable of accumulating human radiation. Perhaps the wind blows anger away.