‘Polly Gilmour, you mean? That could work. They’d arranged to meet and then Ian came along and surprised them.’ But Willow couldn’t see what possible connection there could be between a librarian from London and an ex-magician who ran a classy B&B in Shetland. It still seemed as if only Eleanor Longstaff linked all the people involved in the case. With her death they’d turned into a group of disparate individuals. And the encounter in the croft had obviously left Polly shaken. Would she have been so scared if the meeting had been planned?

The hotel office was a small room on the ground floor. Any money had been spent refurbishing the guest rooms and this work space was shabby. Flatpack shelves had been put up in the alcoves and the desk looked as if it might have come from a charity shop in Lerwick. Willow sat at it and started the computer. Hillier hadn’t logged off and she didn’t need a password to get into the system or his emails.

‘Nothing from Eleanor,’ she said. ‘Either they communicated by phone or he deleted the messages as soon as he’d read them.’

‘Anything from the mysterious Monica?’ Perez was working through the shelves, pulling out guide books and files. There was a box file full of receipts for the work done on Springfield House. He set it on the desk next to Willow.

‘Nothing saved. But he seems to have been very diligent about deleting his emails. Mine go back for years.’

‘More secrecy,’ Perez said.

‘But who would have access to this computer? Only David.’ She was aware of Perez standing very close to her and looking over her shoulder. She imagined that she could feel his breath on her neck.

‘That was the point, surely,’ Perez said. ‘Charles was involved in something to do with Eleanor’s project and he knew that David would disapprove.’

‘We’ll take the computer with us when we go south tomorrow.’ Again Willow sensed the movement of time as something tangible, like the tide or the wind. ‘The geeks in Inverness should be able to track the email history. We might have some mention of your Monica yet.’ She began to lift the receipts from the box file.

‘Look at this! Hundreds of pounds for a set of bedroom curtains. You can see why the couple were running out of cash.’ She wondered if David had sanctioned the expenditure or if he’d closed his eyes to it because he knew the excitement of renovating and decorating Springfield was all that kept Charles in Shetland.