"It had so happened that, in the course of his labours on behalf of the little stone figure and the girl with the ivy-leaves in her hair, Mr Honeyfoot had discovered something. He believed that he had identified the murderer as an Avebury man. So he had come to Wiltshire to look at some old documents in Avebury parish church. "For," as he had explained to Mr Segundus, "if I discover who he was, then perhaps it may lead me to discover who was the girl and what dark impulse drove him to destroy her." Mr Segundus had gone with his friend and had looked at all the documents and helped him unpick the old Latin. But, though Mr Segundus loved old documents (no one loved them more) and though he put great faith in what they could achieve, he secretly doubted that seven Latin words five centuries old could explain a man's life."