Then suddenly it hit me. “Unless—she’s Ronny’s real mother. Mrs. Padgett said Ronny was adopted. What if one of their servants got into trouble and they did the kind thing and adopted the baby?” After all, she had remarkably similar coloring to Ronny’s. But why would they have continued to support her all these years, and end up by keeping her at a very expensive institution—unless Major Padgett was the father, of course.

Everything started to fit into place. Major Padgett who had had what was described as a scandal or a breakdown and been shipped off to a cottage on the estate. What if it had come out that he had contracted syphilis, then fathered a child of a maid? Queen Victoria could stand no kind of immorality. Had she done the kind thing and kept him in her service but effectively banished him? And syphilis often led to insanity, didn’t it? Was Major Padgett really insane?

“You’re awfully quiet,” Granddad said.

“Just thinking things through and they are beginning to make sense,” I said. “I hope Sir Jeremy turns up soon. I suppose I’d better put everything in a letter and leave it for him at the Braemar inn if he doesn’t come by tonight.”

As we had been talking the clouds had come in, blotting out the mountains and covering the road ahead in wet mist. I gripped the steering wheel tightly as the road snaked down a series of hairpin bends.

“I’m starving,” I said after a while. “I missed lunch.”

“Don’t talk about food now, please,” Granddad said.

I glanced at him. He did look rather green. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you got sick in motorcars,” I said.

“I didn’t know until now, did I? I ain’t ridden in too many cars in my life, you know, and never on roads like this, and never with someone driving the way you drive.”

“I drive jolly well,” I said.

“I’m not disputing it, ducks, but you drive ruddy fast, and all these bends too.”

“Sorry.” I smiled and slowed to a crawl around the next bend. “Not too much further now, I promise. See. There’s a glimpse of the loch down below.”

We came around another bend and there was the loch, stretching black and gloomy before us. The clouds were darker now and it looked as if it might rain any second. As we approached the jetty, Granddad said, “ ’Ere, what’s going on over there?”

A small crowd had gathered and I saw that the blue speedboat was in the water again, in the process of being tied up at the dock. I pulled off the road and we got out, pushing our way through the crowd.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Is everyone watching the speedboat?”