“Well, he was an odious man, wasn’t he?” I laughed uneasily. “He ogled women, he insulted men. He called Nicholas by his first name, you know. In public. Imagine an English general calling the Prince of Wales David. Only Mrs. Simpson dares to do that.”

“I’m well aware that Nicholas and Anton disliked him,” Darcy said, “but they are both intelligent young men. They realized his importance to the stability of the region. And if one of them wanted to kill him, there would have been better opportunities. They were out hunting, I gather. Why not mistake him for a wild boar? For that matter why not push him out of the train on the way here?”

“You’re a bloodthirsty person at heart, aren’t you?” I asked.

He grinned. “Oh, no, my dear, I’m a romantic. But I’ve seen plenty of hard reality in my life. So who else would have wanted him dead?”

“What about the servers?” I asked. “Did you have a chance to talk to them?”

“Only very briefly, but I have their names, and again, I can have someone look into their backgrounds further when we are back in communication with the outside world. But as far as I could gather they all seemed to be as that Dragomir chap described them: local men, long in the employ of this castle and thus with no reason to be concerned with what happened in Bulgaria.”

“Which leaves Dragomir himself,” I said. “He was standing behind the table. I wouldn’t have noticed if he’d moved forward and dropped something onto Pirin’s plate or into his glass. What do you know about him?”

“Dragomir? Very little.”

“Do you know, for example, that he is not from Romania?”

“He’s not?”

“Siegfried told me. He said that was why he hadn’t risen higher in Romanian government. He comes from a border area that has changed hands several times. He could be in the pay of another government.”

Darcy’s eyes lit up. “He certainly could be. Good thinking, old bean.”

I had to laugh.

“What?”

“I didn’t know you thought of me as ‘old bean.’ I’d hoped for something a little more romantic.”