The islanders’ first impression of their new laird could not have been more favourable. Just days after buying the Isle of Gigha for £5.4m in 1989, Malcolm Potier hosted a lavish party at Achamore House, his baronial mansion, dispensing chablis and charm in generous measure.

The residents of Gigha have had plenty of time since to savour the bitter aftertaste of that evening.Three years later they got home from work to find sheriff’s notices pinned to their doors. Potier had used their island home as collateral against a loan, and when his business empire foundered, Gigha became the property of faceless Zurich bankers.

Potier’s name was dirt, but nobody on Gigha imagined how far from grace their former laird had yet to fall.

This weekend they have a better idea. On Thursday of last week an Australian court found the former baron of Gigha guilty of attempting to have his former girlfriend murdered.

Remarkably it was his second conviction for that offence — it was while he was in jail serving a six-year sentence for attempting to hire a hitman that Potier tried once more to snuff out her life.

He tried to persuade a cell mate to find someone to kill Linda Oswald, the mother of his daughter. Potier suggested arranging a car accident, after which the killer would jump into Oswald’s car and snap her neck.

The fellow prisoner, who informed the authorities, had taken notes of Potier’s instructions. They read: “Must be accident . . . Must die . . . No mistakes . . . No drugs.”

On Gigha this weekend there is still some astonishment that the laid-back former laird, a plain-speaking man who had time for everyone, was capable of not one but two cold-blooded murder plots.

Susan Allan, a director of the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust and an islander for 40 years, is torn between the two images she has of Potier. “He was a charming man and pleasant to speak to,” she says. “He was liked because he more or less let us do what we wanted. He did play the laird a little, but it was not with a heavy hand. We had confidence in him and nobody suspected anything was wrong.”

The laird would be a regular at island ceilidhs, relishing his role in the community. Friends and business associates would be flown up from London and proudly shown around, Potier asking them what they thought of the spectacular views of Islay and Jura to the west and the mainland to the east.

Potier was said to have outbid Mick Jagger when he bought the island and his love for Gigha appeared genuine, as seems clear from his description of how it felt to leave the island after a family holiday there in the early 1980s.

“It happened on top of the ferry taking us away from the peace, quiet, stability and friendliness of the island and, of course, its beautiful scenery,” he said at the time.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the pressures one has to face in business in England and the contrast between the two. It became an instant ambition to make a proper home on the place. For years I dreamed of owning the place, much as a child yearns for a train set.”

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