“Then there was the scarf. Did you notice that she was wearing it all day? Sylvia Drysdale had given it to her and she was very proud of it. But when we found the body she wasn’t wearing it. She fell above the tide line, so it wouldn’t have been washed away. I had a look for it yesterday at the top of Ellie’s Head and around the hall, but I haven’t found it. If it was taken from her either before or after she fell, it means that someone else was implicated in her death.”

He turned to her.

“Did you notice whether she had anything alcoholic to drink at the dance?”

She considered carefully.

“I don’t remember very well,” she said. “I’d had quite a lot to drink myself. But I don’t think that she can have done. We didn’t allow the children to get at the Cup, and they all had orange squash for the toasts.”

“So how did she come to fall? There was a moon on Friday night. I’ve seen her climbing around the cliffs like the other children after gulls’ eggs and she was more surefooted than any of them.”

She was not at all convinced.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “Those all seem such little things. They can’t mean that someone murdered her. It seems melodramatic, silly.”

“I can’t change facts,” he said quietly. “I have tried to find a different way of explaining them, but I haven’t succeeded yet. There may be another explanation. I came to talk to you to ask if you think I should try to find it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police are satisfied that Mary died accidentally. Perhaps I should leave it at that.”

“But if you believe that she was murdered, you must do something about it.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “This is a special place, precarious. If I meddle I might endanger its survival.”

“But it’s not a museum,” she said, repeating the phrase yet again. “I’m not at all sure that you’re right about Mary’s death, but just because someone’s been born on Kinness or is married to someone who was born here, they’re not above the law. Surely the same moral code applies here as anywhere else.”

She knew that she sounded pompous, and realized in a moment of insight that she was trying to convince herself. She had wanted Kinness to be like a museum, dramatically different from anywhere else. That had been the attraction. Now she was here, she had to think again. She did not want to be a church-going, submissive, housewifely museum exhibit. She felt very confused.

“If you believe that Mary was murdered,” she persisted, “you must do something about it.”

“But what? I did try to explain my doubts to the police, but they were as sceptical as you are.”