Free Malice On The Moors by Graham Thomas

imagining it, or had he lowered his voice slightly in a conspiratorial manner? Everyone wants to be a cop, she thought. She thanked him, and as she walked out of the bar she decided that she'd better head up to her room to do up her notes before she forgot something important.
    The next thing she knew, there was an annoyingly persistent banging in her head. She opened her eyes, unsure for a moment where she was. She was lying on her bed, fully clothed, a molten flood of afternoon sunlight pouring through the bay window. Someone was pounding onthe door. She held her watch in front of her face and blinked blearily. “Good God!” She leapt to her feet and stumbled towards the door. She fumbled with the lock, eventually managing to wrestle the door open.
    A smiling Powell, formulating the witty remark.
    “Don't say anything,” she warned.
    “I've come to invite you to dinner,” he replied innocently. “And I must say you look smashing.”
    She grimaced. “I'll be down in twenty minutes.” She shut the door in his face.
    The harried-looking landlord was clearing away the traces of the grilled salmon and buttered courgettes from their table. Powell and Sarah Evans were the only customers in the dining room, but Walker had his hands full serving them as well as his patrons in the pub next door. “Missus is under the weather,” he explained hurriedly. “Give me a shout if you need anything else,” he said, as he dashed back into the bar.
    Powell raised his glass. “Here's to success.”
    “I'll drink to that,” Sarah replied, taking a sip of her wine. Then she leaned back in her chair and sighed contentedly. “That was bloody marvelous.”
    “Standard procedure, Sergeant. The detection of crime is a sport of noble minds, and to function at peak efficiency one must properly nourish the little gray cells.”
    She smiled crookedly. “If I drink any more wine, I won't have any little gray cells.”
    “We'd better get down to work, then,” Powell rejoined. “I've been meaning to ask you how you got on with Curtis.”
    With an admirable attention to detail, Sarah recounted the gist of her conversation with the gamekeeper. “Whatever happened must have happened during the thirty minutes or so that Dinsdale was alone in his butt waiting for the fog to lift,” she concluded. “By the time Curtis got to him he was already in a bad state, so I should think that he may have been bitten sooner rather than later. To know for certain, we'd need to know how long the venom takes to act.”
    This seemed to arouse Powell's interest. “And Curtis didn't hear anything suspicious during this time?”
    Sarah shrugged. “Apparently not. But then he was some distance away. As I understand it, the butts are about forty yards apart. Curtis says he didn't hear a thing from Dinsdale until he went over to check up on him.”
    Powell grunted. “It seems to fit. When Katie Elger— that's Frank Elger's daughter—showed up on the scene, she found Curtis as white as a sheet, standing over Dinsdale, who was probably beyond hope by then.” He frowned slightly. “Wouldn't you think, though, that someone who had just been bitten by a venomous snake would cry out or call for help?”
    “He was drunk, wasn't he?” Sarah observed.
    “True.” Powell emptied his glass. “What was your general impression of Curtis?”
    Sarah thought about this for a moment. “Rather fancies himself, I'd say. He spoke highly of Dinsdale, and I gathered that the feeling was mutual. Dinsdale recently promoted him to head keeper, apparently. I got the feeling, though, that there was something going on between Curtis and the former head keeper, Harry Settle.”
    “Really? It wouldn't hurt to follow that up.”
    She nodded. “Tomorrow I'd like to drive over to Helmsley,” she said. “The National Park headquarters are located there. I thought it might be a good idea to bone up on adders.”
    “I didn't think you liked snakes.”
    “There's all sorts of