Flavia de Luce is back. After a five-year absence, a new book in this cozy mystery series has arrived.
“What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust: A Flavia de Luce Novel” by Alan Bradley picks up Flavia’s story where the last mystery, featuring the wedding of Flavia’s oldest sister Ophelia, left off. It’s 1953 with Ophelia still on her honeymoon.
Flavia’s family are impoverished English gentry whose estate, Buckshaw, is near the rural English village of Bishop’s Lacey. When both parents died, her mother during World War II and her father the previous year, Flavia’s older sisters Daphne and Ophelia were bypassed to inherit Buckshaw. The estate was bequeathed to Flavia, the youngest daughter.
Flavia, nearly 13, doesn’t want to think much about her approaching womanhood. Becoming a woman is not part of her plan. Flavia’s plan does involve chemistry and solving murders. Frighteningly intelligent, Flavia is a self-taught chemist and uses her late great-uncle Tarquin’s chemistry laboratory on the family estate. Buckshaw is tumbling down, but great-uncle Tar’s lab remains world-class. Flavia uses it to study poisons and solve murders.
Flavia hears of the tragic demise of local recluse, Maj. Grayleigh. He was found in his cottage after his breakfast and mushroom poisoning is suspected. Mrs. Mullet, Buckshaw’s cook, comes under suspicion because she regularly fixed the major’s breakfasts, including that morning. She even picked the mushrooms for his omelet.
Flavia comes home to find Inspector Hewitt questioning Mrs. Mullet. She fears Hewitt will go after the obvious suspect, but she knows Mrs. Mullet is incapable of murder. She decides she must to find the real killer, even though Inspector Hewitt, as always, warns her not to meddle. Aided by Arthur Dogger, Buckshaw’s handyman and her live-in younger cousin Undine, she sets off to uncover the truth.
Flavia clears Mrs. Mullet through clever chemical analysis, but uncovering the real killer proves more elusive. Maj. Grayleigh was a retired hangman. Was the killer connected to a person he hanged? Was someone else involved?
Solving the mystery leads Flavia to uncomfortable truths at the nearby U.S. airbase at Leathcote. They also involve the NIDE, a secret British intelligence organization the de Luce family belonged to for generations.
“What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust: A Flavia de Luce Novel” is one of the darkest of the series. Flavia is yielding her innocence of murder to life experience. That may be one of its appeals. The mystery is tautly crafted with numerous dead ends and red herrings, yet it has a satisfying conclusion.
