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."

"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,
examini