before long. Her romantic interlude in Saskatchewan was not found to have any link to her murder. In 1913 at the age of 51 Mary was living at the remote and inaccessible Northbank Cottage, an old farm situated beneath the precipitous red sandstone cliffs on the raised beach near Portencross with her sister Jessie and brother-in-law Alex. Background Alexander McLaren and his wife Jessie and Mary Gunn were not locals and had only moved in during the month of May 1913. Alexander had been a self-employed baker, a farmer and something of an evangelist. He was sixty at the time of the murder and his wife Jessie was sixty-one whilst Mary was only forty-nine and still very good looking. The family had kept to themselves and were regarded locally as being quite well off. Alexander had recently sold the sheep from his old Taynuilt farm at a Perth auction and therefore had £100 that a potential thief may have thought was held as cash by him at Northbank Cottage. On the day of the murder Mary went shopping in West Kilbride, Alexander walked out to meet her on her return journey and they met a rather nondescript stranger who they walked and talked with. The murder On the dark, wet and stormy evening of Saturday 18 October 1913 the family were relaxing in front of an open fire in the parlour with only an oil lamp throwing a low light over the room. The two ladies were knitting and Alexander was reading aloud from a book, At Sunwich Port by W. W. Jacobs with his back to the only window in the room. Suddenly at around 8.30 pm a pistol shot rang out, followed by five more shots. Mary cried out "Alex I'm shot" and collapsed with three bullet wounds, the fatal one piercing her heart. Alexander had time to shout to his wife " Floor, Floor "; however, Jessie was then hit by two bullets and Alex, shot first, had a wound to the hand, penetrating his left index finger to the bone, made when the bullet passed through the book he was reading, throwing it to the floor. At least one fired bullet was found lying outside the broken window, having ricocheted off the stone walls, and two bullets were also removed from the chair in which Alexander had been seated that night. Alexander, not aware that he