The Scaly Breed by Colonel Maurice Cartarette
Author: Colonel Maurice Cartarette
Illustrator: Commander Geoffrey Syce
Publisher: Not known but published in 1929
Source book: Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh (Inspector Alleyn #18)
The Scaly Breed is first described as a sizeable book on the habits and characteristics of freshwater trout. Later in Scales of Justice it is a series of short and pleasantly written essays on the behaviour and eccentricities of freshwater fish. It contains an odd mixture of folkishness, natural history, mild flights of fancy and, apparently, a certain amount of scientific fact.
Chief Inspector Alleyn and Inspector Fox of Scotland Yard are called in when Colonel Cartarette is found murdered on the bank of the river Chyne. A giant trout, the Old ’Un, that the Colonel and his neighbours had been trying to catch for years has been dumped by the body.
Alleyn riffles through the pages of The Scaly Breed which he finds on the bookshelves of several suspects, and learns to his astonishment that the scales of a trout are all different, much as all fingerprints are different. “It is not perhaps generally known that the scales of no two trout are alike: I mean, microscopically alike in the sense that no two sets of fingerprints correspond. It is amusing to reflect that in the watery world a rogue-trout may leave incriminating evidence in the form of what might be termed scales of justice.” This fascinating information is accompanied by a diagram showing the scales of two different trout. In the modern, post 2000 world, I dare say each trout can be differentiated by DNA.
In the margin of this article is a facetious drawing of a roach [a freshwater fish] with a meerschaum🗝️ and deerstalker hat examining through a lens the scales of a very tough-looking trout. If this means nothing to you; think Sherlock Holmes,
This information, discovered by chance, gives Alleyn the clue he needs to solve his murder case.
Colonel Cartarette had begun to write a history of his regiment (possibly the Barfordshires but we are not told), and shortly before his murder had been asked by Sir Harold Lacklander to oversee the publication of his untitled Memoirs by Brierley and Bentwood⚔️ yep! a publishing company). Sir Harold dies very soon after asking Colonel Cartarette to take on this task. It should have been a simple assignment, but for the contentious Chapter 7 where Sir Harold admits he had been a Nazi sympathiser. Look, this is a bad thing by today’s standards [2023], but before WWII it was unfortunately fairly par for the course with many of the upper classes in Britain. Yes, we won the war, but honestly I think we were lucky.
Sir Harold conspired to help the German interest to get control of the railway concessions in Zlomce [wherever that is/was], and allowed one of his young assistants to be blamed for letting a German agent get hold of a vital cable. The wretched young man killed himself in remorse. Complicated I know, but most of the characters in Scales of Justice have good reason to hush up the contents of Chapter 7 which impedes Chief Inspector Alleyn’s case considerably.
⚔️ Alleyn claims that Brierley and Brentwood are his own publishers, but we know from Vintage Murder that his book was published by Sable and Murgatroyd.
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| Images borrowed from the internet and with grateful thanks to Robin Ade |
🗝️a meerschaum pipe courtesy of Revival House Antiques
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