“He has always lost his temper with monotonous regularity,” Dooley said. “He hates to lose at cards. He hates to be laughed at.”

“But did he ever try to throttle you for any of those things? As I told the young’uns, he’s all bark and no bite.”

“All the same I would like to talk to him myself,” Dooley said. “Perhaps he needs a sympathetic ear at this moment.”

“He wouldn’t talk to me,” Darcy said. “But then, he hasn’t wanted me around since my mother died.”

“So put it to him,” Oona said. “Remind him that Dooley used to be in the legal profession and could have had a brilliant career if he hadn’t been so softhearted. See if he’ll agree to talk to Dooley. You never know. Something might just come out of it.”

“I’ll try.” Darcy gave her a halfhearted grin.

I put on my overcoat and jammed my hat low onto my forehead, so that I shouldn’t be recognized, then I climbed into the Rolls beside Darcy.

“I suppose it’s out of the question to see the scene of the crime for ourselves?” I asked.

He shook his head. “There are still police guarding the house,” he said. “And the inspector from Dublin wouldn’t take it kindly if we were poking our noses in.”

“Is the manservant still living there?”

“I believe so.”

“Then they must have cleared him of suspicion or he could have disposed of any potential evidence.”

“Why would a manservant want to kill his master? He had a damned good job and I’m sure he was paid well. Americans always do overpay, don’t they? Now he’ll have to go back to a country still mired in a depression. And if you were a servant and wanted to kill your employer . . .” He paused.

“You’d poison him slowly,” I said. “Or at the very least make it look like an accident.”

Darcy laughed. “You have a criminal mind, do you know that?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “This whole murder scene. Leaving Mr. Roach lying on the floor with the weapon nearby. If you’d just killed, wouldn’t you try to dispose of the weapon, or at least wipe it clean and put it back on the wall with the other weapons so that nobody would notice it?”

Darcy nodded thoughtfully. “If my father was blind drunk at the time, he might not have been thinking clearly. Or he might have just wanted to get back to the lodge as quickly as possible before the manservant heard the commotion and came to investigate.”