Fish provide the clue: Scales of Justice (Ngaio Marsh)

 

Ngaio Marsh. Scales of Justice (1955). A tight-knit community settled along an idyllic trout stream in an idyllic English vale suffers a nasty murder. Alleyn, Fox and Co. winkle out family and personal secrets, collect a convincing number of clues, and arrive at a suitably surprising solution. Along the way breaches are healed, character is revealed, people learn salutary lessons, and true love blossoms twice over. A nicely constructed puzzle kept me turning the pages, and I hardly had time to notice the creaky wheels of the plot and the barely 2D characters. The scales in the title belong to two fish, one of which was a source of conflict between neighbours, supplying both important forensic clues and a possible motive.
     Marsh here indulges in a fantasy of an England in which social class and degree kept people within moral bounds. In other books, she satirises this kind of romantic comedy, so I don’t know what she’s up to. With a severely limited cast of characters, she’d written herself into a corner, and maintaining the tradition of noblesse oblige must have seemed the only plausible path out of the maze. A good entertainment, but not her best work. **