“Should have,” Lord Kilhenny said angrily. “Naturally I assumed that I would be able to keep items that were important to me. But his damned lawyer had things written in such a way that I couldn’t touch anything on the estate the moment the document was signed. I was lucky to come away with my clothes. I also thought, naïvely as it turned out, that if Roach and I worked together, if the stables flourished, we’d develop an understanding between us and I could ask for the return of items that meant a lot to me but not to him. That never happened. The man kept his distance and only spoke to me when absolutely necessary. He treated me like a hired hand, and what’s more he enjoyed it. I think it gave him great pleasure to lord it over a real lord. He was a sadistic bastard. He deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth.”

“None of this looks good for you, Father,” Darcy said. “It gives you a strong motive to want him dead.”

“I agree,” Lord Kilhenny said, “and if the prosecution asks me if I wanted him dead, I’d have to answer honestly that I would have rejoiced at that news.”

Darcy sighed. “So you saw he was about to put certain items up for auction and went to confront him.”

“That’s right. He had the club lying on the table. I picked it up and tried to tell him how important it had been to the history of our family. I told him I would buy it from him if he’d give me time to raise the money. And do you know what? He laughed at me. He said he knew a couple of museums that would be willing to pay more money for the club than I’d ever raise in my lifetime. Then he taunted me and said I should have hired myself a sharper lawyer when the deeds were drawn up.”

“What did you do then?” Darcy asked in a quiet voice.

“I put down the club. I told him that one day he’d push me too far and then I stalked out. I walked around the grounds for a while to calm down. Then I went home.”

We sat there, all of us staring into the fire, wrapped in our own thoughts. Then Darcy said, “It seems to me, Father, that the evidence against you is centered on your fingerprints on that club. Yours and only yours.”

“That struck me as strange too,” I said. “You say the club was on the table. Someone must have lifted it from the wall and left their own fingerprints on it. Come to that, it must have been handled millions of times. So why just your fingerprints? It makes me think that someone deliberately set you up to look like the murderer.”

“Who would do that?” Lord Kilhenny asked. “And why?”