“She’s buried in the graveyard,” she said. “ When it says ‘he should have been hers,’ it’s talking about Stuart.”

“Yes.”

She thought again of the note on the wedding dress:

“He should have been mine.” Perhaps the Stennets had prevented Elspeth marrying Jim, just as the Dances believed that the Stennets had been responsible for the first Ellie not marrying her Stuart.

“Jim never told me about the storm,” she said.

“He will know about it all the same.”

“There’s still ill feeling between the Stennets and the Dances, isn’t there? But that couldn’t have had anything to do with Mary’s death.”

“No,” he said, almost regretfully, because it would have been such a good story. “That most just have been coincidence. Kenneth Dance says that the Stennets could run the boat better and that the freight charge is too high. The Stennets say that Kenneth Dance charges too much for the things in his shop. That’s how it is now. It’s money that comes between them.” He paused, then continued slowly: “Kenneth and Annie did name their daughter after the poor girl that went mad. That seemed an unlucky thing to me.”

He got up and poured boiling water into a small china teapot.

When she got back to Unsta, George Palmer-Jones was already there, waiting for her. He was sitting outside on the wooden bench. She was not sure that she wanted to see him, but she let him in.

He took the green and white scarf from his pocket and put it on the kitchen table between them.

“I’m going to see Sandy and Agnes,” he said, “ to tell them that I’ve found the scarf, and to ask their permission to investigate their daughter’s death.”

I’m going to give them the responsibility for the decision, he thought. It’s too much for me now.

“Have you any more idea what can have happened?” she asked.

“Whoever pushed Mary took the scarf, either before she died or afterwards. We don’t know why. On Monday morning, before the boat went out, Sylvia Drysdale was talking to someone in the derelict croft next to the road. She decided to leave the island suddenly when I asked her about anyone here who might have a secret. Later the scarf was found in the croft. It looked as if it had been dropped by accident. It could have been left by Sylvia, but more likely, I should think, by whoever she was talking to.”

“You couldn’t recognize the voice?”

“No. It could have been a man or a woman. It’s difficult to tell with a whisper. Did any of the boat crew mention having met Sylvia that morning?”

“No.”

“Robert might be able to help us,” George said. “ He was up on the hill above the croft that morning. He might have seen or heard something. We’ll go there when we’ve been to Sandwick.”