Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

For Stella

Nurse Kettle pushed her bicycle to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused. Sweating lightly, she looked down on the village of Swevenings. Smoke rose in cosy plumes from one or two chimneys; roofs cuddled into surrounding greenery. The Chyne, a trout stream, meandered through meadow and coppice and slid blamelessly under two bridges. It was a circumspect landscape. Not a faux-pas, architectural or horticultural, marred the seemliness of the prospect.

“Really,” Nurse Kettle thought with satisfaction, “it is as pretty as a picture,” and she remembered all the pretty pictures Lady Lacklander had made in irresolute water-colour, some from this very spot. She was reminded, too, of those illustrated maps that one finds in the Underground with houses, trees and occupational figures amusingly dotted about them. Seen from above like this, Swevenings resembled such a map. Nurse Kettle looked down at the orderly pattern of field, hedge, stream and land, and fancifully imposed upon it the curling labels and carefully naïve figures that are proper to picture-maps.

From Watt’s Hill, Watt’s Lane ran steeply and obliquely into the valley. Between the lane and the Chyne was contained a hillside divided into three stripes, each garnished with trees, gardens and a house of considerable age. These properties belonged to three of the principal householders of Swevenings: Mr. Danberry-Phinn, Commander Syce and Colonel Cartarette.

Nurse Kettle’s map, she reflected, would have a little picture of Mr. Danberry-Phinn at Jacob’s Cottage surrounded by his cats, and one of Commander Syce at Uplands, shooting off his bow and arrow. Next door at Hammer Farm (only it wasn’t a farm now but had been much converted) it would show Mrs. Cartarette in a garden chair with a cocktail-shaker, and Rose Cartarette, her stepdaughter, gracefully weeding. Her attention sharpened. There, in point of fact, deep down in the actual landscape, was Colonel Cartarette himself, a Lilliputian figure, moving along his rented stretch of the Chyne, east of Bottom Bridge, and followed at a respectful distance by his spaniel Skip. His creel was slung over his shoulder and his rod was in his hand.

“The evening rise,” Nurse Kettle reflected; “he’s after the Old ’Un,” and she added to her imaginary map the picture of an enormous trout lurking near Bottom Bridge with a curly label above it bearing a legend: “The Old ’Un.”

On the far side of the valley on the private golf course at Nunspardon Manor there would be Mr. George Lacklander, doing a solitary round with a glance (thought the gossip-loving Nurse Kettle) across the valley at Mrs. Cartarette. Lacklander’s son, Dr. Mark, would be shown with his black bag in his hand and a stork, perhaps, quaintly flying overhead. And to complete, as it were, the gentry, there would be old Lady Lacklander, bog-bottomed on a sketching stool, and her husband, Sir Harold, on a bed of sickness, alas, in his great room, the roof of which, after the manner of pictorial maps, had been removed to display him.

In the map it would be demonstrated how Watt’s Lane, wandering to the right and bending back again, neatly divided the gentry from what Nurse Kettle called the “ordinary folk.” To the west lay the Danberry-Phinn, the Syce, the Cartarette and above all the Lacklander demesnes. Neatly disposed along the east margin of Watt’s Lane were five conscientiously preserved thatched cottages, the village shop and across Monk’s Bridge, the church and rectory and the Boy and Donkey.

And that was all. No Pulls-In for Carmen, no Olde Bunne Shoppes (which Nurse Kettle had learned to despise), no spurious half-timbering marred the perfection of Swevenings. Nurse Kettle, bringing her panting friends up to the top of Watt’s Hill, would point with her little finger at the valley and observe triumphantly, “ ‘Where every prospect pleases,’ ” without completing the quotation, because in Swevenings not even Man was Vile.

With a look of pleasure on her shining and kindly face she mounted her bicycle and began to coast down Watt’s Lane. Hedges and trees flew by. The road surface improved and on her left appeared the quickset hedge of Jacob’s Cottage. From the far side came the voice of Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn.

“Adorable!” Mr. Danberry-Phinn was saying. “Queen of Delight! Fish!” He was answered by the trill of feline voices.

Nurse Kettle turned to the footpath, dexterously backpedalled, wobbled uncouthly and brought herself to anchor at Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s gate.

“Good evening,” she said, clinging to the gate and retaining her seat. She looked through the entrance cut in the deep hedge. There was Mr. Danberry-Phinn in his Elizabethan garden giving supper to his cats. In Swevenings, Mr. Phinn (he allowed his nearer acquaintances to neglect the hyphen) waS generally considered to be more than a little eccentric, but Nurse Kettle was used to him and didn’t find him at all disconcerting. He wore a smoking cap, tasselled, embroidered with beads and falling to pieces. On top of this was perched a pair of ready-made reading glasses, which he now removed and gaily waved at her.

“You appear,” he said, “like some exotic deity mounted on an engine quaintly devised by Inigo Jones. Good evening to you, Nurse Kettle. Pray, what has become of your automobile?”

“She’s having a spot of beauty treatment and a minor op’.” Mr. Phinn flinched at this relentless breeziness, but Nurse Kettle, unaware of his reaction, carried heartily on, “And how’s the world treating you? Feeding your kitties, I see.”

“The Persons of the House,” Mr. Phinn acquiesced, “now, as you observe, sup. Fatima,” he cried, squatting on his plump haunches, “ Femme fatale. Miss Paddy-Paws! A morsel more of haddock? Eat up, my heavenly felines.” Eight cats of varying kinds responded but slightly to these overtures, being occupied with eight dishes of haddock. The ninth, a mother cat, had completed her meal and was at hter toilet. She blinked once at Mr. Phinn and with a tender and gentle expression stretched herself out for the accommodation of her three fat kittens.

“The celestial milk-bar is now open,” Mr. Phinn pointed out with a wave of his hand.

Nurse Kettle chuckled obligingly. “No nonsense about her, at least,” she said. “Pity some human mums I could name haven’t got the same idea,” she added with an air of professional candour. “Clever pussy!”

“The name,” Mr. Phinn corrected tartly, “is Thomasina Twitchett, Thomasina modulating from Thomas and arising out of the usual mistake and Twitchett…” He bared his crazy-looking head. “ Hommage à la Divine Potter. The boy-children are Ptolemy and Alexis. The girl-child who suffers from a marked mother-fixation is Edie.”

“Edie?” Nurse Kettle repeated doubtfully.

“Edie Puss, of course,” Mr. Phinn rejoined and looked fixedly at her.

Nurse Kettle, who knew that one must cry out against puns, ejaculated, “How you dare! Honestly !”

Mr. Phinn gave a short cackle of laughter and changed the subject.

“What errand of therapeutic mercy,” he asked, “has set you darkling in the saddle? What pain and anguish wring which brow?”

“Well, I’ve one or two calls,” said Nurse Kettle, “but the long and the short of me is that I’m on my way to spend the night at the big house. Relieving with the old gentleman, you know.”

She looked across the valley to Nunspardon Manor.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Phinn softly. “Dear me! May one enquire…? Is Sir Harold…?”

“He’s seventy-five,” said Nurse Kettle briskly, “and he’s very tired. Still, you never know with cardiacs. He may perk up again.”