We stepped forward, searching like bloodhounds but finding nothing, not even a second footprint. No scraps of cloth conveniently caught on brambles, nor bloody thumbprints on smooth bark. Of course, it was possible that the Garda had done a thorough job and removed anything that might count as evidence. As we passed through a thick stand of bushes something moved in the underbrush, quite close to us. At first I thought it might be a rabbit or a bird, but I heard something pushing through bushes— something large. I grabbed Darcy’s arm.

“What could that be?” I hissed.

“There used to be deer in the park,” Darcy whispered back. “Maybe some of the herd has survived.”

All the same he moved closer to me. We stood there, alert and hearts beating rather fast, but there was no more sound. In fact the woodland had fallen remarkably quiet again. Through the bare branches of the trees we could now see the vast shape of the castle emerging. A true keep from the Middle Ages, designed to keep out intruders with a great stone bastion around it and small slits of windows on the lower floors. It made Castle Rannoch look positively inviting.

“I’m surprised there’s not a moat,” I whispered to Darcy.

“There used to be. They filled it in a couple of hundred years ago.” He grinned at me. “Actually it’s nicer inside than it looks. It was added to in the eighteenth century and the other side has bigger windows and a nice view.”

A little farther and the woodland ended in a large kitchen garden and outbuildings.

“We probably shouldn’t go any closer,” Darcy said. “This has been an exercise in futility, hasn’t it? Apart from that one footprint, there is no indication that my father came back this way in a drunken stagger.”

“What are all those outbuildings?” I asked.

“Gardener’s cottage, sheds, stables. All that sort of stuff.”

“Plenty of places for someone to hide,” I said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Just an observation. If someone did want to get in unobserved and kill Roach, he could easily have done so. We know that Mrs. McNalley saw a ghost.”

“He could just as easily have walked back to the road, let himself out of the main gate and not really have risked being observed,” Darcy said. “In our day there would have been a pack of servants. Gardeners and grooms would have been around, and of course we had dogs.”

“Dogs, of course,” I said. “Everyone has dogs, don’t they? Except this American. He couldn’t have, or they would have sounded the alarm at a stranger. Does your father no longer have any dogs either?”

“He does. We’re down to one very old Labrador, Blackie. But unfortunately we can’t ask the dog if my father staggered out drunk that night and came back with blood on his clothes.”