“This leads through the cellars and up to the kitchen,” he said in a low voice. “You should go cautiously from here on. This man may be armed.”

I saw the constables look at each other with concern. Darcy went into the dark interior with them. I was reluctant to follow but also too curious to stay behind outside. The passageway smelled damp and musty and very old. We passed rooms that looked more like dungeons than cellars. I suppose that was what they were once. Then up a winding stone stair and we were all at once in a mammoth kitchen with a flagstone floor and a row of copper pots hanging over an old-fashioned stove. There was no sign of food having been prepared recently. I remembered that Mickey had taken his meals at the pub. Maybe he was on his way there for his lunch now. I decided I should mention this and touched the nearest constable on the shoulder, making him yell out and leap as if burned. The others all reacted with fear. Darcy frowned when he saw me. “I told you to stay behind.”

“I didn’t want to miss out on the fun,” I said. “And I wanted to mention that Mickey Riley has been taking all his meals at the pub recently. Have you asked about him there?”

“We did,” one of them said. “The landlady says she hasn’t seen him since Wednesday night.”

When Barney’s taxi went into the river. So my hunch was right. Or maybe he met up with Lofty and they killed Barney together. That gave them five whole days to be well clear of here. We went from the kitchen past the butler’s pantry, the laundry room, various storerooms.

“He’s not down here,” one of Garda constables said. “Where would his bedroom be?”

“Presumably on the third or fourth floor,” Darcy said and led us up a flight of stairs and through a baize door to the main part of the castle. Here we were in tall vaulted hallways. Banners and tapestries hung from the walls. It was bitterly cold. Clearly no fire had been lit for a long while, and the space had that abandoned feeling. I realized how hard it must be for Darcy to come back to his family home like this. The dining room, sitting room, several other reception rooms all lay cold and unoccupied. There was a pretty morning room at the back of the castle that had bigger windows and a view over the grounds to the distant hills. We went up a broad curved staircase to the next floor. Here was a gallery with a fireplace big enough to roast an ox at its center. The walls were decorated with displays of weapons—swords, spears, battle-axes and shields. Beyond it was the library where Bugsy’s body had been found.