Free Malice in Cornwall by Graham Thomas

of light visible through the crack underneath. He tried the knob; it turned, but the door appeared to be fastened on the inside. Mildlysurprised, he tried a little more vigorously, the door rattling slightly on its hinges. There was a muffled scuffling inside the room, followed by a thump, a stifled oath, and then silence.
    Mysterious bodies washing up on the beach and now things that go bump in the night. Best to leave well enough alone, he thought. As he retraced his steps he briefly considered a stroll along the beach but decided on second thought that he'd better turn in; he had a busy day planned for tomorrow. He went up to his room and tried to get through to Marion in Canada, but there was no answer. Later, as he lay awake in bed, he couldn't help wondering what Jane Goode was doing.
    The next morning, after a brief tete-a-tete with Sergeant Black at a pleasant little teahouse overlooking the harbor, which Black had discovered the previous day (partially redeeming himself in his superior's eyes), Powell was treading the springy turf of the coastal path that traverses the high clifftops along much of the north coast of Cornwall. Thank God for the National Trust. Just ahead was Towey Head; on his left were lush green fields crisscrossed by dry-stone walls crowned with tamarisk bushes, their trunks and branches bent to leeward and distorted by the prevailing southwest wind. To his right the blue sunlit expanse of the Atlantic, its edges frayed by jagged rocks into white ribbons of surf that lashed at the cliffs below. Looking back, he could see the narrow strip of the Sands and towans, and in the distance the pastel-colored cottages of Penrick. He wondered if at that very moment Jane Goode was gazing out her window inthe Wrecker's Rest contemplating the perfect gerund, or perhaps sitting on one of the benches along the harbor-side working out some nuance of plot.
    The path undulated gently. A few tattered clouds drifted across a blue sky; the trilling of birdsong and a fresh sea breeze enlivened his senses. Periodically, in the distance he heard the
pop pop
of a shotgun. Someone shooting pigeons, he guessed. Just ahead, the track veered inland to avoid an eroded section of cliff that formed a narrow valley descending steeply to the sea. At the head of the valley the path intersected a lane, which Powell knew branched off the main Penrick Road about a quarter mile farther inland. The lane plunged between tall hedgerows, and as he walked down it he tried to identify the various wildflowers that adorned the hedges like an intricate mosaic of stained glass. He could only name a few: golden celandine, barren strawberry and wood betony, campion, early purple orchis, and in the damp places pale carpets of marsh marigold.
    It struck Powell that the sparse quickset fences that passed as hedgerows in other parts of the country were but poor cousins to the Cornish variety. The hedges between which he now passed were in fact great mounds of earth and stones, perhaps eight feet high and five feet wide at the base, the whole held together by a profusion of grasses, ferns, and flowers. Substantial, uniquely beautiful and enduring, and imbuing a sense of splendid isolation from the rest of the world—much like the popular romantic conception of Cornwall itself. It was hard not to feel a certain empathy for a people who had once traded their tin for the golden crescents and blue stones ofancient Crete, but who were now almost completely dependent on tourists who descended each summer like a plague of locusts. Powell thought guiltily about his own summer sojourns to Bude.
    Deplete the fish stocks and close down the mines, force the young people to look for greener pastures elsewhere, and then expose the local traditions to inevitable erosion by the twin tidal waves of modern transportation and communication systems. In the end one was left with a museum piece—something rather quaint, perhaps, but hardly a living culture. Powell smiled to