“Then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?” I said.

“You’d better beat it before I yell for the cops,” he said, giving me a hate-filled stare.

“Come on, Darcy,” I said. “I think we’ve learned all we need to for now.” I gave Mickey Riley a curt little nod, then turned on my heel and headed back for the forest.

“You were brilliant,” Darcy said when we were out of the man’s hearing. “You should have been a lawyer.”

“Sometimes I manage to channel my great-grandmother,” I said, giving him a pleased little grin. “But it was interesting, wasn’t it? I had him truly rattled. And the way he speaks, he’d certainly not find it easy to get a job in service with a family in Ireland. Can you imagine my sister-in-law, Fig, hiring someone like him? She becomes hysterical over Queenie. Do you really think that valets in America are so uncouth?”

“He may be a good actor and able to adopt the correctly subservient attitude when needed,” Darcy said. “We’re seeing him as he really is. Perhaps Mr. Roach never did.”

“I’d love to know if he was employed before this as a valet.” I turned back to Darcy as we pushed between tall bushes. “Can you see the Rockefellers hiring him? How can we find out whether the police in America are checking into his background?”

“I have my connections,” Darcy said. “When we go to Dublin there is usually someone at the embassy who is secretly placed there by the FBI. And if not, I can pass that request along through a chap that I know in London.” He paused, looking back. “But presumably the detectives here will have ruled him out as a suspect before they arrested my father.”

“Because his prints aren’t on the club and they could find no motive,” I said with a sigh.

“And because my father more or less confessed,” Darcy said.

“We need to talk to your father,” I said. “Find out about that row in the afternoon.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried talking to him?” Darcy snapped. “He either shuts up like a clam or flies off the handle. One can’t have a normal conversation with him.”

We had been walking fast and reached the little gate in the wall. I looked across at the brilliant green fields as we emerged. In the distance I spotted horses, unsaddled now, but running on their own, just for the joy of it. The stables next, I thought. The strong sunlight made me blink. I held up my hand to shield my eyes and another thought came to me. “Darcy, do you know if it was raining on the day that Mr. Roach was killed, or the days before it?”

Darcy frowned. “Why would I know that? And why is it important? Are you suggesting muddy prints in the house?”