Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh

The village of Swevenings was charming, attractive, and very, very small. There were three houses in the valley. At Jacob's Cottage, there was Mr. Danberry-Phinn who lived there with his cats. At Uplands, there was Commander Syce who was quite good with his bow and arrow. At Hammer Farm, which wasn't a farm, were Colonel Cartarette, his wife, and her step-daughter, Rose. On the far side of the valley was Nunspardon Manor. Sir Harold Lacklander, who was very ill, and his wife, Lady Lacklander, who enjoyed sketching,  lived there. Their son, George Lacklander enjoyed golf and visits with Mrs. Cartarette. Mark Lacklander, George's son, was the village doctor and was in love with Rose Cartarette. It is also necessary to mention Nurse Kettle, who from time to time, visited all of their homes.

As was expected, Sir Harold died, of natural causes. Before he died, he gave his memoirs to Colonel Cartarette who was to read and edit them. In these memoirs, the Colonel found something explosive which would have an effect on several in the village. Shortly after this, Colonel Cartarette was murdered as he was fishing. Lady Lacklander did not want a common policeman handling the investigation so called Scotland Yard to request that the investigation be put into the very competent hands of inspector Roderick Alleyn.

Although the characters and setting may seem familiar to readers of classic mystery novels, this book has enough complications to maintain interest, and the evidence collected is rather unusual. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
 
One big problem with my copy of this book, a paperback published by Berkeley in 1960, is that it does not have a map of this small community. It would be a great help to the reader to understand where events are occurring - at which river bank, which spinney or which road. On the first page of this novel, Nurse Kettle muses about the geography of the region "She was reminded, too of those illustrated maps that one finds in the Underground with houses, trees and occupational figures amusingly dotted about them". I too would have liked to have such a map.

This book was published in 1955 and it will be entered in my Detective Notebook in the category of Where - Set in a small village.