Free Malice On The Moors by Graham Thomas Page A

things I don't like that I have to put up with,” she said pointedly.
    Powell ignored this. “While you're brushing up on your herpetology, I'll pay a visit to Blackamoor Hall. It's about time I introduced myself.”
    Sarah stared at the fire roaring in the hearth. She suddenly felt very warm and the atmosphere seemed stifling.
    “Why don't we get some fresh air?” Powell was saying.
    “What? Oh, yes—I'd like that,” she said.
    The sun dipped behind the dark curve of the hill as they walked together beside the beck, the sounds of the village—a woman calling to her child, a barking dog, and the shouts of small boys playing football on the green— were submerged in the murmur of rushing water.
    Sarah breathed deeply. “I've often thought it would be lovely to live in a place like this,” she said.
    Powell grunted in a noncommittal fashion. “Tell me, Sarah—by the way, may I call you Sarah?”
    “What am I supposed to call you, then? Sir? Mr. Powell?”
    He shrugged. “Erskine, or just Powell if you prefer.”
    She looked skeptical. “It's a bit informal, isn't it? Suppose I forget myself back at the Yard? I'd be drummed out.”
    “Well, we're in the field now. Things are always a bit informal in the field.”
    She smiled in spite of herself. “I know, standard procedure. You were going to ask me something just then.”
    “I was wondering what Merriman sees in you,” Powell said mischievously.
    A puzzled expression on her face. “What do you mean?”
    “Apparently he has plans for you.”
    She colored. “You must be joking!”
    Powell described the circumstances in which Merriman had assigned her to the case.
    “Good God! I hope you don't think …” She was suddenly angry. “I don't need him or anyone else to pull strings for me. I'll succeed on my own merit or not at all—I refuse to be a bloody statistic in one of his self-serving PC schemes.”
    “An admirable sentiment, but I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, if I were you. You could be back in the office pushing paper right now.”
    She sighed. “There is that. But what about you?”
    “What about me?”
    “I mean, how do you cope?” She searched in vain for the right words. “You know … with the Merrimans of the world.”
    He hesitated for a moment. “It's the job—this damnable job. It keeps me going, keeps me thinking. Or keeps me from thinking. I don't know.” He smiled thinly. “In the grander scheme of things, Merriman and his ilk are the least of my worries.”
    She was taken aback by such an unexpected display of candor from her superior and was unable to think of areply. They walked along for a while without speaking. The wind began to pipe up and Sarah shivered. “It's getting late,” she said. “We should be getting back.”
    “Yes, of course,” Powell said, trying to conceal his disappointment.
    It seemed that in no time at all they were back at the inn. They stood at the bottom of the stairs for an awkward moment.
    “Well, until tomorrow, then,” he said.
    She smiled. “Good night.”
    Powell retired to the pub to contemplate a time long ago when lions roared in the forests of Yorkshire and hippos basked in the warm waters of Ryedale.

CHAPTER 7
    Blackamoor Hall was a sprawling pile of dark gritstone with a Tudor wing added on, a riot of complicated roof angles, and an impressive number of jutting chimneys (which had something to do, one assumed, with the long and bleak moorland winter). Built in the seventeenth century on the site of a twelfth-century nunnery (the irony of which would soon become evident), the house was situated on what was known as West Moor, high above upper Brackendale and west of the Blackamoor Rigg Road. It is said that the nuns of neighboring Rosedale Abbey used to make the pilgrimage to the nunnery at Blackamoor to contemplate the deeper realities. Interestingly, the austere and purifying landscape upon which they came to meditate was a creation of the monastic movement itself, a