“If the woman was really removed the assassin must surely have had some assistance,” I pointed out.  “He could not have carried the body very far unaided.”

She agreed with me, but expressed a belief that the double crime had been committed alone and unaided.

“Have you any idea as to the motive?” I asked her, eager to hear her reply.

“Well,” she answered hesitatingly, “if the woman has fallen a victim, the motive will become plain; but if not, then the matter must remain a complete mystery.”

“You tell me, Miss Muriel, that you suspect the truth, and yet you deny all knowledge of the murdered man!” I exclaimed in a tone of slight reproach.

“Until we have cleared up the mystery of the woman I can say nothing,” was her answer.  “I can only tell you, Mr. Gregg, that if what I suspect is true, then the affair will be found to be one of the strangest, most startling and most ingenious plots ever devised by one man against the life of another.”

“Then a man is the assassin, you think?” I exclaimed quickly.

“I believe so.  But even of that I am not at all sure.  We must first find the woman.”

She seemed so positive that a woman had also fallen beneath that deadly misericordia that I fell to wondering whether she, like myself, had discovered the body, and was therefore certain that a second crime had been committed.  But I did not seek to question her further, lest her own suspicions might become aroused.  My own policy was to remain silent and to wait.  The woman sitting before me was herself a mystery.

Then, when the rain had abated, I told Davis to send her trap a little way up the high-road, so that my aunt and uncle should not see her departing; and after helping her on with her loose driving-coat, we left by one of the servants’ entrances, and I saw her into her high dog-cart and stood bareheaded in the muddy high-road as she drove away into the gloom.

* * * * *

Rannoch Wood was already in its gold-brown glory of autumn, and as I stood with Muriel Leithcourt on the edge of it, near the spot where Olinto Santini had fallen, the morning sun was shining in a cloudless sky.

True to her promise, she had sent me a note by one of the grooms asking me to help search for her bracelet, and I had driven over at once to Rannoch and found her alone awaiting me.  The shooting party had gone over to a distant part of the estate, therefore we were able to stroll together up the hill and commence our investigations without let or hindrance.  She was sensibly dressed in a short tweed skirt, high shooting-boots and a tam-o’-shanter hat, while I also had on an old shooting-suit and carried a thick serviceable stick with which I could prod likely spots.

On arrival at the wood I asked her opinion which was the most likely corner, but she replied: 

“I know so little of this place, Mr. Gregg.  You have known it for years, while this is only my first season here.”