“Because I was asking about secrets. As I’ve said, she cared for James. She was afraid that I might have found out about them. It wouldn’t have mattered too much for her—she had a dreadful reputation anyway—but she knew that it would have ruined him. So she decided to get out to Baltasay where she’d be well away from any questions. I must stress that she had no idea at that time that James had murdered Mary.

“On her way out to the boat James met her in the deserted croft by the road. Perhaps he had decided that he could not do without her, and he begged her to stay. Certainly he was so upset that when he left the croft he did not notice that he had dropped the silk scarf. When he went back for it later, it had gone. Ben Dance had gone to play in there before school and had found it.”

“Why did he kill Robert?” Sandy, said. “He was an old fool, but he was not a threat to James.”

“Robert was up on the hill the morning that James and Sylvia met in Taft. It must have been clear that there was an attachment between them. As I say, I think that James was devastated to learn that Sylvia was planning to leave the island. When she got to Baltasay, he phoned her at the hotel, probably to ask her to come back to Kinness. Perhaps they kissed, and Robert saw them. Perhaps he actually heard what they said to each other.

“Robert probably thought that he would be able to use the information—not just to make mischief like Mary—but for some sort of gain. I don’t suppose he connected the relationship between Sylvia and James with Mary’s death, so he didn’t realize how dangerous it was to blackmail James.”

“He will have asked for a goose,” Sandy said suddenly. “He was always thinking of his stomach, the greedy old man, and we were all too mean to give him one.”

“Whatever it was, he went that afternoon after you’d all been out shooting the geese. Perhaps he saw James down on the Loons. James would still have had his shotgun with him. It was too easy. James didn’t have time to think.

“When I went to Baltasay, I told Sylvia that Robert had been murdered and that he had been on the hill above her when she had been meeting at Taft. Then she realized, I think, that James must have been the murderer.”

“Why didn’t she say anything to you?” Sarah asked.

“I’m sure that she would have done eventually, when she was less confused. But she loved him. She would have seen it as a betrayal.”

“Love!” Agnes snapped. “ She doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”