"A clear case of murder," said the police surgeon. Beatrice Datchet had been stabbed, her body lay huddled on the office floor in a pool of blood. Inspector Arnold could find no trace of the weapon nor, later, uncover any motive for her death. But when, not long afterwards, the faceless corpse of a man was found in the country village which had been the girl's home, Arnold and his friend Desmond Merrion began to realise that the two deaths might not only be linked but could both be strangely related to a mystery of twenty years ago: the fate of a famous explorer who had failed to return.