Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh

ordinary sense of the phrase. She’s merely taken it upon herself ever since she came to Nunspardon to run Chyning and Swevenings. For some reason they seem to like it. Survival of the feudal instinct, you might think. It does survive, you know, in isolated pockets. Swevenings is an isolated pocket and Hermione, Lady Lacklander, has got it pretty well where she wants it.” Sir James continued in this local strain as they slid and squelched down the muddy hillside. He gave Alleyn an account of the Cartarette family and their neighbours with a particularly racy profile of Lady Lacklander herself.
    “There’s the local gossip for you,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody and has done so for centuries. There have been no stockbroking overflows into Swevenings. The Lacklanders, the Phinns, the Syces and the Cartarettes have lived in their respective houses for a great many generations. They’re all on terms of intimacy, except that of late years there’s been, I fancy, a little coolness between the Lacklanders and old Occy Phinn. And now I come to think of it, I fancy Maurice Cartarette fell out with Phinn over fishing or something. But then old Occy is really a bit mad. Rows with everybody. Cartarette, on the other hand, was a very pleasant, nice chap. Oddly formal and devilishly polite, though, especially with people he didn’t like or had fallen out with. Not that he was a quarrelsome chap. Far from it. I have heard, by the way,” Sir James gossiped, “that there’s been some sort of coldness between Cartarette and that ass George Lacklander. However! And after all that, here’s the bridge.”
    As they crossed it, they could hear the sound of rain beating on the surface of the stream. On the far side their feet sank into mud. They turned left on the rough path. Alleyn’s shoes filled with water and water poured off the brim of his hat.
    “Hell of a thing to happen, this bloody rain,” said the Chief Constable. “Ruin the terrain.”
    A wet branch of willow slapped Alleyn’s face. On the hill to their right they could see the lighted windows of three houses. As they walked on, however, distant groups of trees intervened and the windows were shut off.
    “Can the people up there see into the actual area?” Alleyn asked.
    Sergeant Oliphant said, “No, sir. Their own trees as well as this belt of willows screen it. They can see the stretch on the far side above the bridge, and a wee way below it.”
    “That’s Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s preserve, isn’t it?” asked the Chief Constable. “Above the bridge?”
    “Mr.
Danberry-Phinn
?” Alleyn said, sharply.
    “Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn, to give you the complete works. The ‘Danberry’ isn’t insisted upon. He’s the local eccentric I told you about. He lives in the top house up there. We don’t have a village idiot in Swevenings; we have a bloody-minded old gentleman. It’s more classy,” said Sir James, acidly.
    “Danberry-Phinn,” Alleyn repeated. “Isn’t there some connection there with the Lacklanders?”
    Sir James said shortly, “Both Swevenings men, of course.” His voice faded uncertainly as he floundered into a patch of reeds. Somewhere close at hand a dog howled dismally and a deep voice apostrophized it, “Ah, stow it, will you.” A light bobbed up ahead of them.
    “Here we are,” Sir James said. “That you, Gripper?”
    “Yes, sir,” said the deep voice. The mackintosh cape of uniformed constable shone in the torchlight.
    “Dog still at it seemingly,” said the sergeant.
    “That’s right, Mr. Oliphant. I’ve got him tethered here.” A torch flashed on Skip, tied by a handkerchief to a willow branch.
    “Hullo, old fellow,” Alleyn said.
    They all waited for him to go through the thicket. The constable shoved back a dripping willow branch for him.
    “You’ll need to stoop a little, sir.”
    Alleyn pushed through the thicket. His torchlight darted about in the rain and settled almost at once on a glistening