“It started when Melissa sent James to ask Sylvia to visit her,” George said, “ but Sylvia and James very rarely met in the school house after that. James still had a key to the lighthouse. He was paid to do maintenance work up there, and that’s where they met. Probably in one of the cottages. Mary must have seen them on one of the few occasions when he went to the school house. She used to wander into Sylvia’s room and try on her jewellery and make-up. Perhaps it was a time when they thought they were safe, during school hours. Perhaps Mary wandered up in one of her breaks and saw them together. I think that’s what must have happened. They didn’t even know she’d seen them. Mary didn’t say anything to Sylvia, but she began to drop hints to James. He realized that she must know. He couldn’t face the shame of the affair being public knowledge. He had spent his life on Kinness telling people how to behave. It was unthinkable for his secret to come out. So he arranged to meet Mary in the interval of the dance on Ellie’s Head. It had to be then because he was playing in the band. Perhaps he bribed her with a present, or more information. She waited for him by the cliff. She was deaf, so she wouldn’t have heard him coming. It would have been very easy. As I found out today, he was fit. It was quite possible for him to run back to the hall to start the music for the second half of the party.

“He would probably have got away with it, if he hadn’t gone back for the scarf.”

“Why did he do that?” Jim asked.

“It was Sylvia’s scarf. I think he went back later, when he was supposed to be searching for Mary on the hill. He knew that the relationship with Sylvia was over, and he had to have something of hers. He had a desperate passion for her. He didn’t think that anyone would notice that the scarf was gone. He put it in his pocket.”

George turned to Sarah.

“Do you remember when we went to talk to James and Melissa after Robert died: Melissa was quite calm until I showed her the scarf, then the panic attack started? She had seen it in James’ pocket, I think, without realizing the implication of it.”

“Yes,” Sarah said, “ I remember.”

“When I first started asking questions about Mary’s death, Sylvia didn’t take me seriously. She didn’t know, you see, that Mary had discovered her secret. She thought that the child had slipped accidentally and that I was playing detective through boredom. Perhaps I was.”

“Then why did she decide to leave the island suddenly, when the Ruth Isabella took the children out to school?”