‘We pass by the boathouse this way,’ Mrs Oliver explained.

As she spoke the boathouse came into view. It jutted out on to the river and was a picturesque thatched affair.

‘That’s where the Body’s going to be,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The body for the Murder Hunt, I mean.’

‘And who is going to be killed?’

‘Oh, a girl hiker, who is really the Yugoslavian first wife of a young Atom Scientist,’ said Mrs Oliver glibly.

Poirot blinked.

‘Of course it looks as though the Atom Scientist had killed her – but naturally it’s not as simple as that.’

‘Naturally not – since you are concerned…’

Mrs Oliver accepted the compliment with a wave of the hand.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘she’s killed by the Country Squire – and the motive is really rather ingenious – I don’t believe many people will get it – though there’s a perfectly clear pointer in the fifth clue.’

Poirot abandoned the subtleties of Mrs Oliver’s plot to ask a practical question:

‘But how do you arrange for a suitable body?’

‘Girl Guide,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘Sally Legge was going to be it – but now they want her to dress up in a turban and do the fortune telling. So it’s a Girl Guide called Marlene Tucker. Rather dumb and sniffs,’ she added in an explanatory manner. ‘It’s quite easy – just peasant scarves and a rucksack – and all she has to do when she hears someone coming is to flop down on the floor and arrange the cord round her neck. Rather dull for the poor kid – just sticking inside that boathouse until she’s found, but I’ve arranged for her to have a nice bundle of comics – there’s a clue to the murderer scribbled on one of them as a matter of fact – so it all works in.’

‘Your ingenuity leaves me spellbound! The things you think of !’

‘It’s never difficult to think of things,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘The trouble is that you think of too many, and then it all becomes too complicated, so you have to relinquish some of them and that is rather agony. We go up this way now.’

They started up a steep zig-zagging path that led them back along the river at a higher level. At a twist through the trees they came out on a space surmounted by a small white pilastered temple. Standing back and frowning at it was a young man wearing dilapidated flannel trousers and a shirt of rather virulent green. He spun round towards them.

‘Mr Michael Weyman, M. Hercule Poirot,’ said Mrs Oliver.

The young man acknowledged the introduction with a careless nod.