“Very well,” I answered.  “Let us place ourselves in the position of the murderer, who probably knew the wood and wished to conceal a body in the vicinity without risk of conveying it far.  On this, the left side, the wood has been thinned out for nearly half a mile, and therefore affords but little cover, while here, to the right, it slopes down gently to the valley and is very thick and partly impenetrable.  There can therefore have been no two courses open to him.  He would look for a likely place to the right.  Let us start here, and first take a small circle, examining every bush carefully.  The body may have easily been pushed in beneath a thicket and well escape observation.”

And so together, after taking our bearings, we started off, working our way into the thick undergrowth, beating with our sticks, and making minute examination of every bush or heap of dead leaves.  In parts, the great spreading trees shut out the light, rendering our investigations very difficult; but we kept on, my companion advancing with an eagerness which showed that the fact of the woman’s body being there was no mere surmise.

All through the morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles.  Even Muriel’s thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and laughingly exclaimed: 

“Now what untruth must I invent to account for that?”

My own coat was badly torn, and more than once I was compelled to scramble through almost impassable thickets; yet we found no trace of any previous intruder, and having completed our circle were compelled to admit that the gruesome evidence of the second crime did not exist at that spot.

More than once I felt half inclined to tell her how I had actually discovered the body of the woman, yet on reflection I foresaw that in such circumstances silence was best.  If I desired to solve the strange complicated enigma which had thus culminated in a double crime, it would be necessary for me to keep my own counsel and remain patient and watchful.

When Hutcheson replied from Leghorn, and when I discovered where Olinto was employed, I might perhaps follow up the clues from that end.  I might find his wife Armida and learn something of importance from her.  So I was hopeful, and by reason of that hope remained silent.

Muriel was untiring in her activity.  Hither and thither she went, beating down the high bracken and tangles of weeds, poking with her stick into every hole and corner, and going further and further into the wood in the certainty that the body was therein concealed.