“Do you happen to be Mr. Roach’s valet?” I asked, because I could sense that Darcy might explode. “Mickey, is it?”

“That’s right. Mickey Riley.”

“Well, Mr. Riley, we are here because Mr. O’Mara believes in his father’s innocence and is naturally doing everything he can to exonerate him,” I said.

The American frowned and it flashed into my head that the word “exonerate” was outside the scope of his vocabulary.

“You’re wasting your time, fella,” he said. “Your old man is as guilty as hell. Like I told the cops. Couldn’t have been anyone else, could it? He was the only one who knew how to sneak into the castle without knocking at the front door. He and Mr. Roach had had a doozy of a run-in that afternoon. He was hopping mad. He went home, drank enough to get up his courage and then came back to finish off my boss. That’s the only way it could have happened.”

“Do you know what this row was about?” Darcy asked.

“Your dad and Mr. Roach had been mad at each other ever since that business with the horse dropping dead. My boss blamed your pa for killing one of his best horses. Your pa held a grudge for being fired. Thought he’d been wrongly dismissed and kept saying he had nothing to do with the doping. But again the question was, if he didn’t do it, who did? Who else had the opportunity to get close to the horse right before the race, huh? And why was the syringe found in your father’s drawer?”

“And on that particular afternoon before Mr. Roach died did you overhear anything of what they were fighting about?” Darcy pressed the subject.

“I stayed well away. My boss wasn’t the easiest guy at the best of times. When he was mad, it was best to make myself scarce.”

“So you heard nothing at all? Nothing to give me a clue?”

“Ask your old man yourself,” he said insolently.

“On the night of the murder you told the police that you heard nothing,” I said. “You didn’t hear any signs of a struggle?”

He glared at me. “Who are you, a reporter?”

“No, I’m an investigator, working for a top-notch firm in London,” I said, trying to sound brisk, efficient and top-notch. “Lord Kilhenny has many friends in high places who are rallying to his aid.”

Did I detect a flicker of alarm on his face?

“So would you like to answer my question? Why did you hear nothing? You were still up and awake.”

He smirked then. I had taken rather a dislike to him from the first. This was now confirmed. “Because I was down in the kitchen. I went into the library where he was working to see if he wanted anything before I went to bed, and I found him lying there.”