The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce, #6)

by Alan Bradley

“And have you, also, acquired a taste for pheasant sandwiches, young lady?”

“Tell your father that the Gamekeeper is in jeopardy. He’ll understand. I must speak to him. Tell him that the Nide is under—

Piled on top of the moldering prayer chair, for instance, upon which the terrible-tempered Georgina de Luce had once perched piously in her powdered periwig to hear the whispered confessions of her terrified

"Perched piously in her powdered periwig."

To be perfectly honest, it now smelt as if a coffeehouse in the slums of Hell had been struck by lightning.

To my mind, if Nature had wanted us to have bright red fingertips, She would have caused us to be born with our blood on the outside.

The images were heartbreakingly plain: In frame after frame, Harriet and Father were seated on a picnic blanket in front of the Folly on the island in Buckshaw’s ornamental lake.

Pheasant sandwiches?

One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.

I checked the various traps I always leave set for unwary intruders: single hairs gummed across cupboards, ends of paper sheets jammed haphazardly in drawer openings (on the assumption that no snoop would ever be able to resist straightening them), and, behind each of the inner doors, a thimble filled to the brim with a solution of insoluble ferrocyanide of iron, or Prussian blue, which, once spilled, could not be washed away if seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year.

phizog

The face or a facial expression

“Yaroo!” I wanted to shout, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want Tristram to think I was immature.