“I suggested that to my father,” Darcy said. “There would be no point in looking around without him. I haven’t been home for several years. I’ve no way of knowing if my father sold off family heirlooms when he was short of money, or if the dead man sold them off since.”

This, of course, was true. “But it would introduce an element of doubt to a trial, wouldn’t it? You could testify that there used to be a valuable painting on the wall and now it’s missing.” I waved a hand at him. “We could get Mickey Whatever-his-name-is to testify.”

Darcy snorted. “Hardly. If something’s missing there’s a chance he took it himself. He doesn’t seem like the most trustworthy of chaps to me. Certainly not my view of an old retainer. Which shoots down our suggestion that Roach was a millionaire gone into hiding. If you were a rich man you’d hire a servant with more class, wouldn’t you?”

“We’ve never seen Mickey in action. As we said before, perhaps he’s a brilliant actor and plays the part of the valet to perfection when he’s working. But I agree there is something about him I don’t trust. When you come to think of it, so much of the damning evidence against your father comes from him. He says nobody else came to the castle that day. He says he overheard an argument in the afternoon but heard nothing when there was a scuffle that evening and he says he found his master dead. But what if he were lying? What if he killed the man himself?”

“What reason would he have to kill his employer? Jobs are hard to come by these days, and the depression is even worse in America, so I hear. I should think this job was a plum—not much work and only one man to look after.”

“But if he also wasn’t who he claimed to be? If he was on the run and Roach found out about it?” I touched Darcy’s arm as another thought struck me. “We should take a photograph of him and give that to the embassy too. You never know, someone might recognize him. And his fingerprints. We could get those.”

“And how do you propose doing that?” Darcy looked almost amused now.

“We’ll have him touch something. We’ll say, ‘Here, look at this.’”

“‘Here, look at this?’” Darcy actually laughed.

“Yes, you know. We’ll show him a photograph and say, ‘Do you recognize this man as having come to the castle?’ and he’ll take the photograph from us and we’ll have his prints on it.”

Darcy looked at me, long and hard. “God, Georgie, I love you,” he said. “The eternal optimist. In spite of everything, I’m very glad you came.”