After doing her errand she walked on a few steps along the path across the mountain side. She felt tired of the road leading down past La Solitude, and so she made up her mind to go down by another way to the town. There was a rough, steep way cut into long, low steps—as is the fashion in those parts—which was bound to bring her not far from the hotel where the service was now held each Sunday morning.
After a while she realised that this new way of going down the hill would take her much longer than the old, familiar way. She glanced at her wrist watch. Though she had allowed herself plenty of time, she must hurry now, or she would be late.
She struck off to her left—intending to pick up the road which led straight down to Monte Carlo—into a beautiful, if obviously neglected, grove of orange trees. As she did so she realised that she had not got nearly so far down the hill as she had supposed, for she was only just below the little clearing where the taxi had stopped on her first arrival at La Solitude.
And then, while walking along a narrow path through a plantation of luxuriant bushes, Lily suddenly experienced what is sometimes described as one’s heart stopping still.
Right in front of her, barring her way, there lay on the still wet earth an arm—stretching right across the path.
She stopped and stared, fearfully, at the stark, still, outstretched arm and hand lying just before her. The sleeve clothing the arm was sodden; the cuff which slightly protruded beyond the sleeve was now a pale, dirty grey; the hand was clenched.
All at once she saw the glint of gold just below the cuff, and she remembered, with a feeling of sick dread, the bangle which George Ponting had worn just a week and a night ago!
She did not turn and run away, as another kind of girl might have done. Instead she covered her face for a moment with her hands, and then forced herself to look again.
At last she stooped down, and then she saw that the arm belonged to a body which was mercifully half-concealed from her terror-stricken gaze by a large broken branch.
The deathly still, huddled-up figure had evidently rolled over forward during the storm from under the shelter of a big spreading bush.