Quote:
Originally Posted by Faramir Jones
I agree with you completely regarding 1-3, Formendacil, with 3 certainly being the ' most salacious'.
When I first read that story, I felt, like you, that it resembled something written by Agatha Christie.  I then thought that a hobbit version of Miss Marple would work very well. Perhaps Dora Baggins, Frodo's aunt, who liked writing lots of letters full of good advice, would fit that role?  |
Dora Baggins as Miss Marple smacks of brilliance. Mind you, Tolkien set out to make the Shire quite "Edwardian England" and the Golden Age of Detective Fiction is very much "immediately post-Edwardian England." Going along with exploration of the same idea, it's very easy to see the Shiriffs as the stereotypical "bumbling police inspector"--though I'm not sure, under Shire law, whether they would actually have jurisdiction over a murder investigation. Their main duties seem to be border patrol and animal control.
Which raises the question perhaps of who DID have the legal authority to investigate a murder? The Mayor, we all know, is chiefly a ceremonial position. As head of the Shiriffs we might otherwise assume that the Mayor would have some authority (even if it were seldom/never exercised) to oversee such investigations.... but the aforementioned indications of what the Shiriffs actually do would suggest that the Mayor would not, in fact, have jurisdiction over criminal law. Rather, I would suggest that the Mayor's actual authority is more over civil matters--specifically the civil service. Although the Shire lacks any sort of a bureaucracy, the Mayor would more or less be the Head Bureaucrat, as overseer of the Shiriffs and the Post.
That leaves the Thain, who in any case would have assumed the full delegated authority of the Arnorian Kings. However, while murder cases would certainly be
tried by the Thain, that makes him the judge rather than the police.
It is, any case, a moot point in the Lalia case, since the chief beneficiary of her potential murder was the only one with the authority to judge the case. I suppose, if there were enough pressure from outside, the case could be seen by the Master of Buckland, who held Thain-equivalent authority in Buckland (a territory not considered a legal part of the Shire in the 3rd Age)--but that wouldn't really fly; that'd be like trying a case in Canada because no one in Australia could do it...
One would either have to appeal to a higher authority or let the Thain's substitute fill in, both of which have problems. Regarding the substitute, we have no evidence that being the Thain was onerous enough to have any formally appointed deputies and even if he did, as a "royal family" of sorts, the obvious deputies are the Thain's own heirs, who are implicated in exactly the same situation he is--there is no suggestion at all that an unrelated Deputy Thain of Westfarthing (or something similar) existed.
As to appealing to a higher authority, I suppose anyone who felt a grievance on Lalia's behalf could wait until Elessar's court was set up in Annúminas, but that assumes someone would bring it up, that there would be any evidence beyond hearsay to discuss, and that Elessar would be considered unbiased enough to hear the case again Peregrin's sister in the first place.
I seem to have gone off on a tangent... but it has been a fun tangent.