The law had recently changed in England, making it possible, in the case of the missing, to settle their estate without waiting the customary seven years. So the will was read, and Eva’s sons, the Harcourt-Vane boys, found out about the house, and the money. In Ayrness, there were public denunciations; inflamed meetings in the town hall. Eva’s solicitor threw up his hands – he’d done everything by the book. Newspapers printed photographs of Zoe, Eva’s granddaughter, fleeing Harcourt House with a cardigan over her head. There were calls for certain community leaders to be fired. A top London immigration lawyer offered to represent Mariam, the Pakistani woman Eva had taken in, pro bono. A crowdfunding page was set up, to have Mariam’s quilt returned to her. There were angry interviews on television. It became libellous to suggest to journalists that Sister Lucija from All Our Holy Mothers Convent might have stolen Eva’s rare photographic print by the late Bosnian photographer Mevludin. In Westminster, in private, special advisers began looking it up on their phones: the archipelago’s whereabouts and relationship to the United Kingdom. As the price of Mevludins went up ninefold on the global art market, questions were put to the prime minister on a succession of Wednesdays. Eventually, the Minister for Women announced she was asserting her power under the Inquiries Act, by sending up a judge to arbitrate between the islands’ now-irreconcilable positions.

A public inquiry is not a legal entity, nor is it a court of law. But it is full disclosure: a dissection, in public, of society’s function. It can be embarrassing. It can vilify or redeem. It can drag on for weeks, sometimes months or years. It can be random, personal, and imprecise. Few on the islands liked the sound of it; but by then they had no choice.