“Before you go back to work,” Darcy said, squatting to be closer to them, “have you noticed anybody going into the castle in the last week or so?”

“There are deliveries from time to time,” Carol said. “A grocer and butcher from Dublin about once a week.”

“But no visitors?”

The girls checked with each other. “I don’t think so. We’re concentrating quite hard when we work, so we might not have noticed anybody on foot. But we would have heard a motorcar.”

“There was that priest,” Carol commented. “A young man wearing heavy specs. He asked if Lord Kilhenny was still at the castle and we said he wasn’t. Then he asked if the American was Catholic and we said we didn’t know. And he said it was his duty to visit everyone in the parish and he’d give it a try.”

“Did he get in?” I asked.

Carol shook her head. “I don’t know. We went back to work. He was on foot.”

“And then there was the newspaper reporter that time,” Pamela said. “I don’t think she got in, did she? She tried asking us questions but of course we knew nothing. She’s been around a few times since, but never got in.”

“I suppose you’ve had quite a few reporters since . . . since the American died?” I said.

“Oodles of them. It’s too bad we can’t dish the dirt, as they say, but of course there’s nothing we can tell them. We didn’t know the man. We never saw him, except once or twice coming out in the backseat of a big black car.”

There really seemed nothing more to ask. I looked at Darcy. He nodded to the three of them. “Sorry to have taken up your time. Do let us know if you dig up the O’Mara hoard.”

He gave them a good-natured wave, then took my arm and steered me across the muddy clumps in the field.

“Well, that all seems aboveboard, doesn’t it?” I said. “I mean, I thought it was interesting at first that they had started a dig right across the road from the castle so recently. And I began to wonder whether they might actually be digging a tunnel to get into the grounds or something.”

“It would have to be a long tunnel,” Darcy said. “But I have to think they are what they claim to be. And so easy to check with Trinity as to who is out here.”

“So strike one line of inquiry,” I said and he nodded.

The policeman was still standing beside our motorcar.

“Thank you, Kevin,” Darcy said. “We’ll be off now.”

“Did you learn anything?” Kevin asked.

“There was a visiting American professor,” I said. “And a young priest. They seem to have been the only visitors.”