by Rhys Bowen
“I can make the tea,” I said. “I’m good at it.”
“A young lady of many talents,” Lord Kilhenny said. “I suppose you’d better introduce us properly, Darcy.”
“Father, this is Georgiana Rannoch,” Darcy said. “Georgie, may I present my father, Lord Kilhenny.”
If the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious I think we would have laughed. Being presented with great formality to a man I hoped would be my future father-in-law in a poky little living room with a smoky fire was just too absurd.
“Rannoch?” he said. “Daughter of the duke?”
I nodded.
“You and Darcy make a good pair. Your father was as useless as I have been.”
I could see what Darcy had told me about his father not being an easy man. I didn’t reply to this but went through to the kitchen. There was evidence here of a woman’s touch. Mrs. McNalley had left everything spotless and neat. I put the kettle on and found the pot and tea caddy. Then I put cups and saucers on a tray and added a milk jug and a sugar bowl. When I brought the tray back out, they were sitting in armchairs around the fire, not saying much by the look of it. I handed each of them a cup.
“Now, this is a novelty,” Lord Kilhenny said. “It’s not every day I sit next to a princess and I’m waited on by the daughter of a royal duke.”
“Then you should take that as a sign that you have help in high places,” Zou Zou said. “We are here. We came to Ireland for one reason. To save you from the hangman’s noose. So let’s get started. Darcy?”
She turned to Darcy, who was staring into the flickering flames of the fire. Wind puffed smoke down the chimney, making it swirl out across the room. Darcy cleared his throat then spoke. “You say you remember nothing about that evening. Have no details come back to you? You don’t remember going over to the castle?”
“In the afternoon, I did,” Lord Kilhenny said. “But as to the evening, it’s all a blank. I remember sitting down and pouring myself a glass of Jameson and turning on the wireless to listen to the news. The next thing I knew it was daylight and the police were pounding on the door.”
“When you went up to the castle in the afternoon, apparently you had an argument with Mr. Roach. The valet overheard you shouting.”
Lord Kilhenny nodded. “That is correct. I was furious. I got a copy of an auction catalog and I learned that he planned to sell several of our family treasures, including the Burda club. I went up to the castle to tell him he couldn’t do that. They belonged in the castle—they were part of the O’Mara family heritage.”
“Why did you let him have those things in the first place?” Darcy demanded. “Surely they could have been kept out of the sale.”
“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?”
“There’s something we found out in Dublin today that may change everything,” Darcy said. “The murder victim was not really Timothy Roach. He was using a dead man’s passport.”
Lord Kilhenny looked up with interest for the first time. “Then who was he?”
“That’s what we hope the American embassy will find out,” Darcy said. “They’ll be sending pictures of him back to Chicago in hopes that someone there may recognize him. Also his fingerprints, just in case they’re on file.”
“Really?”
I could see a flicker of hope in his eyes.
“It shouldn’t be that hard to trace him,” I said. “How many millionaires can there be in America these days who can afford to pay cash for a castle and a racing stable? The depression hit them harder than us over there, didn’t it?”
“So the question is, who might have wanted him dead and come over here to kill him?” Princess Zamanska leaned forward, waving a red-nailed finger at us. I don’t think she liked being left out of the conversation.
“Do you remember anyone coming from America to visit him recently?” Darcy asked. “Anyone he met who made him uneasy?”
Lord Kilhenny stared into the fire again. A log had just dropped into place, sending up a shower of sparks. “I wasn’t exactly part of his inner circle, you know. He and I hardly exchanged a word. And from my situation here, I couldn’t see anyone coming to the main gate. He might have had any number of visitors, except that his manservant claimed that he had none. And he certainly seldom went out, only in the motorcar or to the race meetings.”
“And he didn’t talk to anybody there?” Darcy asked. “You didn’t see any interactions where he was confrontational or wary?”
Lord Kilhenny shook his head. “He stayed well away from the other owners. Answered in one-syllable words if they approached him. Of course, from what we suspect now, he was betting on his own horses. Now I look back on it, I wonder if he was betting on them to lose sometimes. There were occasions when I could have sworn a horse should have won and it didn’t seem to me that the jockey was urging it on in the final stretch.”
“This shows he had a devious mentality,” Princess Zamanska said, “but it doesn’t seem relevant to his murder. Apart from people who put money on losing horses, there is not one person who would have been angry enough to seek his death.”
“Apart from me,” Lord Kilhenny said. “After the way he treated me, the way he tarnished my reputation like that, I could easily have killed him.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. “And I don’t believe you did this time either. Somebody has cleverly worked to make you look guilty.”
“So nobody came to visit that you know of. He never went out.”
Darcy shook his head. “This is a ridiculous puzzle.”
I had been trying to collect my thoughts, to make the most of this opportunity to talk with Darcy’s father, just in case it was never repeated. “Do you know if a professor from an American university came to visit him?” I asked. “Or a priest? Because they were both seen near the main gate.”
Lord Kilhenny nodded. “That’s right. There was an American professor. He said he had come to visit the dig and asked if there were any rooms for rent in the castle. I laughed and told him what I knew about Roach. He thanked me and went on his way.”
“That was all he asked you?”
“I didn’t exactly invite him in for a cup of tea,” he said. “He said something about the front gate being locked and I told him there was a telephone to the castle if he wanted to be admitted. And he asked if that was the only way in.”
“You didn’t tell him about the little door in the wall, did you?” Darcy asked.
“Of course not. Do you think I’m stupid?” he snapped, then seemed to collect himself. “No. I saw no reason to disclose that.”
“And the priest?” I asked. “A young priest asked about him. Did he come here?”
Lord Kilhenny shook his head, then he said, “Wait. There was someone. Not a priest, a doctor. About a month ago Roach wasn’t feeling well. A doctor was summoned, but not the local quack. In fact I rather think he was American. Mickey, his valet, told me that he was going to fetch the doctor. I asked if it was serious and Mickey said no, probably just a bad cold but Mr. Roach wanted to be sure. Then, later that day, I was coming from the garage, having just parked the estate wagon, when I overheard an exchange at the front of the house. Roach sounded rather put out. He said something like ‘How do you think they discovered?’ and there was some kind of answer in a deep voice that I didn’t quite catch. Then he said, ‘What now? I can’t go through an operation like that again. Once was bad enough.’ And then another reply and I came around the corner to see the doctor getting into the motorcar and Roach said, ‘Thanks for telling me, although I’ve no doubt you’ll want to be well paid for coming to see me.’ And Mickey drove him off.”
“That’s interesting.” Darcy looked at us for confirmation. “It sounds as if he had some kind of medical condition that had reappeared. He’d had an operation and now he needed a second one. Maybe that’s why he came over to Ireland, because he knew he was dying and he wanted to be alone.”
Chapter 25
STILL DECEMBER 4
A lot has happened today but we seem to be getting somewhere at last.
Zou Zou and I are brilliant! I think I might actually like her.
We stared at each other, digesting this news. It was Darcy who voiced the conclusion we had all come to. “But if he was terminally ill, why might this doctor—if indeed he was the murderer—bother to kill him?”
“Perhaps he had decided to change his will and one of his relatives in the States decided to kill him before he could do so,” Zou Zou suggested.
“That’s one thing we haven’t done,” I said. “Asked the local postman if any letters had come from America recently. It’s my experience of village postmen that they are terribly nosy and he might well remember where the letters came from.”
“Good idea,” Darcy said. “We should follow up on that. Of course, we have no way of knowing what telephone calls he received.”
“The exchange would know,” I said. “I wonder if the local police followed up on that, or if we’d be allowed to do so.”
“Now that they know Roach was traveling on a false passport I think they will have to start a proper investigation,” Darcy said. “We can make suggestions as to the directions that investigation should take.”
“Tactfully, of course,” Zou Zou said and we smiled.
“I still think the most important figure in this is Mickey, the manservant,” I said. “The whole case against Lord Kilhenny hinges on his testimony. He claimed nobody else visited the castle. But now we know that a doctor visited recently. He claimed he overheard the argument that afternoon and then a scuffle that evening. But what if there was no scuffle? What if he is actually the murderer? What if he made sure Lord Kilhenny’s fingerprints were on the club?”
“But what possible motive could he have?” Lord Kilhenny asked. “He has just lost a well-paid job. Jobs are not easy to find these days.”
“If he really was a manservant,” I said. “What if he really had some other connection to Mr. Roach and came over here to murder him?”
“What kind of connection?” Darcy’s father asked. “He was a low-class kind of chap. Roach wasn’t exactly top-drawer himself but he had money.”
“Precisely,” I said. “What if Mickey felt that the fortune Roach inherited should have gone to him?”
“The only fly in that ointment is, why did he wait so long?” Darcy said. “How many years was Roach here, Father? Four, was it?”
“Almost,” Lord Kilhenny said.
“So you want to murder someone but you wait four years?”
“I know,” I said as the idea crystallized in my head, “he knew that Mr. Roach was terminally ill. He didn’t expect him to live long. But when he lingered on for four years he decided to take matters into his own hands, just in case Roach recovered. The doctor came, didn’t he? Perhaps he told Roach another operation might cure him.”
“Possible.” Lord Kilhenny looked at me. He had dark blue eyes like his son. He was still a very handsome man in spite of his wild, unshaven appearance.
I found his glance slightly unnerving, but went on. “So what we have to do is to make the American embassy check into Mickey’s background as well as Roach’s. Perhaps he’s here under an assumed name too. What we have to do is take a photograph of him and get his fingerprints to send to America.”
“He’s an unpleasant little weasel,” Lord Kilhenny said. “Do you think he’ll let you take his photograph and get his fingerprints?”
“We’ll do it by subterfuge,” Princess Zamanska said. “Georgie has a brilliant plan. Such a clever girl. We’ll go up to the castle and I will show him a photograph and ask him if he recognizes the person. He’ll take it and look at it, thus leaving us with lovely fingerprints. And while he’s looking, Georgie will take a photograph of him. Couldn’t be simpler.”
Lord Kilhenny scowled at her. “How can you be so bloody optimistic, Your Highness?” he demanded.
“Because it’s better than wallowing in self-pity,” she said. “I find that looking ahead and making a plan of action is the only way to cope with devastating circumstances. That’s how I managed to survive when I had to flee for my life after my beloved Peter was hacked to pieces by peasants. And your language is atrocious. I’m sure Georgie has never heard so many swearwords in her life.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You’re right. It has become atrocious. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted. And please call me Zou Zou. Everyone else does.”
“I hardly think I know you well enough for pet names,” he said.
“Alexandra, then. But none of this stuffy ‘highness’ business.”
“Very well,” he said gruffly. “In which case you’d better call me Thaddy.”
“Thaddy. Nice name.” She nodded. “Now we’re making progress, aren’t we? Splendid. So do you have a camera and film we could borrow? And a photograph? A nice big one?”
“I have a camera in my bag, as it happens. I’ll go and get it,” Darcy said. I realized he had brought a camera along to record a happier event that was supposed to have taken place. At least now it was going to be useful. As Darcy left the room Lord Kilhenny looked at the two of us. “Are you sure this is a sensible course of action? If this man really has just murdered his employer I certainly don’t want you and Georgiana confronting him. And Darcy and I couldn’t go, because he’d be suspicious and not want t
o talk to us.”
“We won’t be confronting him,” Zou Zou said. “We’ll be asking for his help. A possible line of inquiry we are following. He doesn’t know me. I can say with complete truth that I’m doing preliminary investigations on behalf of the barrister in Dublin. That is absolutely true and may unnerve him a little. And if he did kill his employer he’ll be secretly laughing at us for barking up the wrong tree, as the English would say. What’s more, we are not stupid. If he says, ‘Come down to the dungeons with me and I’ll look at the photograph,’ we won’t go.” And she gave that delightful tinkling laugh.
Lord Kilhenny got to his feet as Darcy came back, triumphantly waving the camera. “Very well,” he said. “I’m not sure what photographs I have that would fit the bill.”
“You have some newspaper photographs taken at race meetings, don’t you?” Darcy said. “Standing in the winner’s circle. That kind of thing.”
“Yes, but you can’t show him a photograph of me,” Lord Kilhenny said testily.
“One of the other people in the photograph—that’s who they’ll ask about,” Darcy said. “You must have pictures of being presented with a cup, or talking with officials. This Mickey creature won’t know who they are.”
Lord Kilhenny nodded and we heard the heavy tread of his feet going up stairs. We sat looking at each other. “Well done, Zou Zou,” Darcy said. “I don’t think we’d ever have got him to talk without you. Now at least we’re onto something with the doctor.”
“And proof that Mickey lied about one thing,” I said.
We looked up as Lord Kilhenny returned. I noticed that he had combed his hair. “This one might do,” he said and handed Zou Zou a photograph. It was a press picture showing him shaking hands with another man while several others looked on.
“Perfect,” Zou Zou said. “Now we need to wipe it completely clean to get rid of all fingerprints.” She took out a white lace handkerchief, picked up the photograph and began to rub diligently. “There, that should do it,” she said after a while. “If there are still fingerprints on it they will be smudged while Mickey’s will be nice and fresh over the top of them. Well, let’s get on with it. It will be dark soon and even I don’t like the thought of creeping around the estate in the dark with a murderer on the loose.” She stood up, holding the photograph by the handkerchief. “Coming, Georgie? You have to show me the way. Camera, Darcy, please?”