“So what are we going to do about this father of yours?” she asked as we went through to the sitting room and Treadwell brought in coffee and brandy. “Have you had your thinking cap on yet, Dooley? What might be his best line of defense? Insanity? Runs in the family, you know.”

“Oh, not insanity,” Dooley said hastily. “They’ll lock him away for life in a mental institution. We wouldn’t want that for him.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Two things, actually. Has anyone checked into this man’s inheritance? Might there be other claimants who would get the fortune if and when Mr. Roach died?”

“The Garda must have notified the authorities in Chicago by now,” Darcy said. “His next of kin would have to be told.”

“So they should know if any of them had recently traveled to Ireland, shouldn’t they?”

“Good point,” Oona said. “In my experience money and greed are behind a good many murders.”

Darcy laughed. “And how many murders have you experienced, Aunt Oona?”

“One reads newspapers,” she said haughtily. “But Miss Georgie was going to add a second thought when we interrupted her. One thing she should know about this family is that we never shut up. Go on, Georgie. Tell us what you were going to say.”

“I was told that he was killed by a blow to the back of the head, and yet the manservant said there had been signs of a struggle. Those two don’t seem compatible, do they?” I looked around at those faces in the candlelight. “If you are struggling with somebody, you can’t very well hit him in the back of the head—even if one of you falls over, it would usually be faceup. A blow to the back of the head to me implies creeping up behind someone and catching him unawares.”

“The girl has a good head on her shoulders,” Oona exclaimed.

Darcy nodded agreement. “That did cross my mind too,” he said, “but unfortunately it wouldn’t exactly help my father to suggest that he’d crept up behind Roach and bashed him to death, rather than struggling with him and maybe killing him accidentally.”

“Yes, I see your point,” Oona said. “If the death was accidental during a struggle, it would be manslaughter, not murder. And if your father’s lawyer could prove that the American instigated the struggle, maybe attacked first, then your father was defending his own life.” She turned to her husband. “You’re awfully quiet, Dooley. What has that sharp little mind of yours been thinking?”

“I’ve been thinking about the club,” Dooley said. “So was it really a shillelagh, a walking stick, or a weapon we are talking about here?”

“They said it was one of the weapons that was hanging on the walls,” Darcy replied.

Dooley wagged a finger excitedly. “In that case it was the Burda club. I wondered about that.”

“The Burda club?”