Then with a sudden panic he wondered if he had got it all wrong, and if Mary’s talk of a secret was just misleading. There were other tensions on the island. The hostility between the Stennets and Dances smouldered as it had done for generations. There was pressure on land and space. He knew that he was obsessed by Mary’s secret and that the obsession was caused by guilt, because he had not persuaded her to share it.

It was dark. The tide was high and the lights from the town and the boats reflected in the water. He had been on Kinness long enough for the electricity to appear magical. There was a knock on the door. It was opened by one of the landlady’s sons.

“Mum says that dinner’s ready,” the boy said, and he could hardly keep the amusement from his voice because the old man looked so funny sitting there in the dark.

George went to the bathroom to wash his hands, then went downstairs to eat.

He would have welcomed the company of the family—he could hear them talking and laughing in the kitchen to the background of television commercials—but his landlady had laid a table in the dining room for him and he ate alone. So even as he enjoyed the food, theories about the case persisted, and he could not forget it.

His landlady saw him out.

“We don’t lock the door,” she said. “I’ll make you a cup of tea when you come in.”

He walked down the high street towards the library. There were small groups of men talking and laughing. Noise and warmth and men spilled out on to the pavement from a busy bar. He envied the companionable warmth of the people leaning against the bar, and was so convinced that the trip to the library was doomed to failure that he almost gave up and joined them. Why should a library on Baltasay keep copies of mainland papers which were six months old? When he was on Kinness and the Woollie Man with his pedlar’s suitcases and his aeroplane offered the promise of escape, it had seemed quite reasonable. Now the idea was ludicrous. But he walked past the open door of the bar. He was here now and he had to try.

The library was a new building, bought with a grant from an oil company. It was brightly lit, very peaceful, nearly empty. The elderly woman to whom he had spoken on the telephone sat behind the desk. She listened carefully to his request, but as he had expected she could not help him.

“We keep copies of the local paper,” she said, “ for the museum. You’d be welcome to look at those.” Her voice was so soft that it seemed hardly to be human. “ We take the national dailies of course, but we don’t keep them, not for more than a week.”