“Goodness,” Glen says, as he leafs through the contents. There’s a reverence in the way he holds the book that touches me. “I knew he was taking it seriously, but this is . . .”

Obsessive. “Yes. I know.”

“Well, he did seem fair passionate about it.” He reads on. “Window tax records! Smart man, your father.”

“All done pre-Internet. I suppose he must have actually gone to public record offices or something.” All that effort. A labor of love, surely. Or a way to avoid the breakdown of love.

“Aye, he did that. Wee research trips.” He reads out loud from the front of the jotter. “Love makes a furnace of the soul. I remember that. He wanted to find out who wrote it.” Me too. And why. And what they meant. “And the kirk, he wanted to find the kirk. It’s not short of secrets, that house. Though it doesnae seem about to give them up.”

I fish out the aerial photos. “Here, take a look at these. I think they came just after he disappeared.” He puts the jotter down carefully to take them. “Callum says the path on this one—see here?—isn’t there anymore.”

“He would know; he loves to take Toast round there. I dinnae let him go alone, though, not by the water.” He flips through the photos again, then pauses on the last two, that don’t contain the Manse. “Now that’s interesting.”

“What?

“This is the falls—see here? You cannae get up there now, with the landslips. But these must have been taken before. Martin thought there was a memorial up there.”

I grab for one of the jotters. “Yes! I read that somewhere. He found notes on a Sunday collection for an unspecified memorial. He thought it might prove the church fire story, right? Yes, look, here—he thought it might have been in memory of all those that died. But . . .” I read the date in his notes. “1802. That’s far too late. That would have been years after the actual fire.”

Glen takes the jotter off me. “Aye, but that doesnae surprise me. The English would never have allowed a memorial at the time. It would have been a lovely spot for it too. I remember it from before the landslips. Fair overgrown, though. There could easily have been something up there somewhere.” He turns a page, then frowns. “Now that’s interesting.”

“The list of names? Yes, I saw that. Turn the page—” He gives a short, surprised bark as he reads the entry I’m pointing to, written clearly in my father’s decisive script. Callum McCue, babe in arms. “I don’t think my dad knew if they were donors for the memorial or names to go on it. The church records weren’t clear.”