Crowned and Dangerous

by Rhys Bowen

  “So there will be some scandal,” I said. “But I really don’t see how our lives will be blighted. Our behavior has been beyond reproach. Or at least mine has. Yours might have been questionable at times—” I watched him grin. “There might be gossip, but then people will accept us for who we are. It’s not your fault, Darcy. You are not to blame for anything. Now, let’s forget all this nonsense and get on with proving your father’s innocence.”

  He reached across and grabbed my hand. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I’m really glad.” And the motorcar almost swerved into a ditch as he kissed me.

  Chapter 17

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4

  SLEUTHING IN KILHENNY.

  As we approached Kilhenny Darcy turned to me. “There seems to be activity in the high street. Maybe you should duck down out of sight.”

  I did as he suggested, curling up into a little ball. We hadn’t gone far before Darcy muttered, “Damn.”

  “What is it?” I asked from beneath the dashboard.

  “Mrs. McNalley has spotted me.”

  “Mrs. McNalley? The one who works at the castle?”

  “She used to be our cook and she stayed on to cook for the new owner. But she also keeps the place tidy for my father and makes meals for him as well. Oh no, she’s heading straight for us.”

  I heard him roll down the window and say, “Good morning, Mrs. McNalley. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “You’re just the person I wanted to see,” she said. “I’ve got these two bags of shopping and my rheumatics are playing up something terrible, so if you don’t mind I’ll just hop in”—she opened the back door of the Rolls—“and let you drive me to the lodge in style.”

  I heard her grunting as she hauled herself into the backseat.

  Now I wasn’t sure what to do. Stay curled up or reveal my presence? I decided that of course she’d see me and think me very odd for sitting with my head between my knees. So I sat up again, giving her a start. “I’ve found it,” I said, waving a triumphant hand. “Oh, hello. I was looking for my missing earring. I’m Georgie, one of Darcy’s friends from London.”

  “Pleased to meet you, miss,” she said. “You’re not coming to stay at the lodge, I take it? I don’t think the accommodation there is suitable for a young lady like yourself these days.”

  “Oh, good heavens no,” I said, with my “bright young London society girl” laugh. “I’m staying with friends nearby. I just popped over to show my support to Darcy as soon as I heard the dreadful news. I know this whole thing must be absolutely beastly for him.”

  “It surely is,” she said. “For all of us. I’ve been with his lordship’s family for nearly forty years. Started out as kitchen maid and then took over as cook. And I can’t say I enjoyed the way things had become, however much that American man paid me. You wouldn’t actually call it cooking, what he wanted to eat: simple and plain, that’s what he liked. A good rump steak. I’d no problem with that. But bangers and mash. Pork chop and mash. No good pies or puddings or fancy sauces at all. Nursery food. That’s what I called it. And then Mr. Darcy’s poor father, hardly eating a thing at all. I’ve been bringing him leftovers from the big house to save me from cooking twice. I never exactly asked for permission but as my old father used to say, what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve after.”

  It was clear that she liked to talk. She delivered this monologue without stopping for breath.

  “I don’t know what will happen to the castle now,” she said. “Have you any idea, Mr. Darcy?”

  “I expect it will go to Mr. Roach’s next of kin. Whoever he has left it to in his will,” Darcy replied, stony faced.

  “Did he ever have any relatives to visit him?” I asked.

  “He never had visitors at all that I knew of,” she said. “No post. No cards. Never heard him speak of relatives either. Not that he was a great one for conversation. Sometimes I’d ask him questions about home, trying to be friendly and make him feel welcome in a new country, but he’d bite my head off and tell me to mind my own business.”

  “Did he chat with his manservant at all?”

  “I wouldn’t say I ever heard them chatting, but at least he tolerated him. I understand he hired this man through an advertisement when he came here. Never had a manservant before, so I gather. I don’t know what he was before he inherited money, but I can tell you it wasn’t high-class. His manners were terrible. Do you know he blew his nose on the table napkin? And you should see how he used his knife and fork. Oh, I know they do it differently in America, but he used to cut up his pork chop and then stab it with his fork and cram it into his mouth. No wonder he had no guests. I can tell you I’m glad to be out of there. I’ll miss the money, of course, but I’m glad all the same. Between you and me there’s been a bad feeling about the place since he moved in. In fact I think it’s haunted.”

  “Haunted?” Darcy said.

  “I always heard that there was a ghost or two in the castle, so the servants used to tell me in the old days. I never paid much attention because my work was always down in the kitchen and high-born ghosts would never come down there. Did you ever see one yourself, Mr. Darcy?”

  “I can’t say I did,” Darcy replied. “As children we used to sit up at night in the long gallery to see if we could spot a ghost, but none of us did. Although we used to scare each other silly in the process.” And he laughed, for a moment forgetting the weight that lay on him.

  “Well, I think I’ve seen one recently,” she said. “Under the American gentleman I turned into a cook general—a general dogsbody if you ask me, doing a bit of cleaning and polishing as well as cooking. Not that it was exactly strenuous work. He didn’t use most of the rooms and kept them shut under dust sheets. Sent out all the laundry. Had the food delivered. And there wasn’t even much cooking to do. But a couple of times recently I thought I saw a light glowing or a shadow moving in a strange part of the castle that wasn’t currently occupied.”

  “How recently was this?” I asked and saw Darcy turn to look at me. “Before Mr. Roach died?”

  “Oh yes. Several times in the last weeks I could have sworn I saw a movement or a shadow. But then it might just be my imagination. And you know what us Irish people are like. We tend to take things like ghosts and omens very seriously, don’t we, Mr. Darcy?”

  “Uh, yes. I’m sure we do,” Darcy replied and I could tell he’d been thinking about something else.

  “So I’m glad I’m no longer wanted at the castle,” she said. “Except I expect they’ll call me in to do a final cleanup after the Garda have finished their investigation.”

  “Were you there when the American man’s body was found?” I asked. “Did you actually see it?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “There were Garda at the gate when I arrived first thing next morning and they didn’t want to let me in, but wouldn’t tell me why. Then they said the inspector would want to question me. Mickey, the man who worked for Mr. Roach, met me as I was coming up the stairs. He looked terrible—white-faced and his eyes just sort of staring. I said to him, ‘What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost yourself,’ and he said, ‘No ghost. But it was horrible. I found Mr. Roach lying on the library floor with his head bashed in last night.’”

  “He seemed really upset by this, did he?” I asked.

  “Upset? He looked as if he might pass out at any minute. And I’m thankful that he discovered the body, not me, or I might have gone in there to dust and stumbled upon it myself.”

  While we had been talking we had left the village and the castle wall appeared before us.

  “So you want me to take you to the lodge and not the castle, Mrs. McNalley?” Darcy asked. “Is that shopping you have there for my father?”

  “It is, Mr. Darcy. You see, I had no idea he’d been allowed to come back home. And with you staying there too, I thou
ght you’d want some proper food, not the odd bits and pieces your father has been living on.”

  “It’s very kind of you to think of us.”

  “Oh, I’d do anything in the world for your family, Mr. Darcy,” she said. “I know your father hasn’t been the easiest man in recent years, but I can understand what he’s been through and that would have broken most of us. And your family is the only family I have, so to speak.”

  Darcy pulled up on the lane outside the lodge, stopped the car and came around to open her door. “Let me carry the bags for you, Mrs. McNalley.” He looked back at me. “I won’t be a minute.”

  As they started to walk away I heard her voice, loud and clear. “You can’t fool me, Mr. Darcy. I know who that young lady is.”

  Oh crikey, I thought. Now it really will be all over the village. I waited for Darcy to return, expecting him to be upset and angry, but instead he came back with a big smile on his face.

  “What?” I asked. “What did she say?”

  “He said that it was quite clear to her that you were one of those lady newspaper reporters and she warned me that I should be careful what I tell you.”

  For once we both laughed.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “Now I really have been given carte blanche to poke my nose around the village. But what she said was interesting, wasn’t it?”

  “About the ghost? Absolutely. It might hint that someone has been creeping around for some time now.”

  “And doing what? Stealing the odd piece to sell? In which case the whole murder could have quite a different complexion. A petty criminal, helping himself to the odd item he could sell in London or Dublin, is caught off guard by Mr. Roach. The American is strong, maybe. Threatens to overpower him and have him arrested. The burglar grabs the nearest weapon and hits out, accidentally killing Mr. Roach.”

  “Interesting,” Darcy said. “I wonder if they would allow my father and me to look around and see if anything obvious is missing. Then we can put forward that theory and they can start looking for known criminals in the area and checking with fences.”

  “And removing suspicion from your father,” I added.

  “We’ll have to see about that.”

  He went to climb back into the motorcar.

  “So where to now?” I asked. “The stables, do you think?”

  “If you like.” Darcy didn’t seem too enthusiastic.

  “Well, what do you propose that we do? We must come up with a line of defense for him.”

  “Your suggestion of an interrupted burglary was a good one,” he said. “I’d like to find out a bit more about this Roach fellow. Until we know more about him and his previous life we don’t know who might have a motive for wanting him dead.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “I could visit the American embassy in Dublin, I suppose. They must have had to find out about his next of kin.”

  “It seems silly to rush into Dublin now we are here,” I said. “Why don’t you drive into that clearing among the trees over there and then you can show me the secret gate and we can look for clues up to the castle. We might even be able to get inside.”

  “Breaking and entering during broad daylight?” Darcy said. “Yes, that will certainly help my father’s case.”

  “All right. We won’t go into the house until the police guard is removed. But we can see if there is any evidence that your father returned drunk from killing Mr. Roach.”

  Darcy nodded. I gave him a quick glance. Ever since I had known him he had been daring, dashing, full of energy. He had seemed to me like a person who enjoyed living on the edge, laughing in the face of danger. Now he appeared like a shadow of his former self, a deflated balloon, and all that wonderful enthusiasm quite missing. And I realized once again that he feared that any evidence we found would only point all the more strongly to his father’s guilt. Nevertheless he did as I had asked and edged the Rolls among the trees. We got out, closing the doors quietly. I followed Darcy as we skirted the lodge, watching warily for signs that someone might spot us from a window. But the curtains were drawn and the building had a blank, unlived-in feel to it. On the other side was a small kitchen garden, more or less bare at this time of year. We moved among rhododendron bushes until we came to the wall. Here it was overgrown with ivy and Darcy had to search for a while before he found the place where the ivy had been disturbed. He lifted a luxuriant branch and under it was the iron handle of a small door. It turned easily and we were through into the park surrounding Kilhenny Castle. The stillness was overpowering, as if every bird and creature that lived there was watchful. My first thought was of the Secret Garden, that we had blundered into a place where nobody went these days. But of course that wasn’t true, as I saw almost immediately a large footprint in a muddy patch close to the wall. I pointed it out to Darcy.

  “Your father’s?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’ve no idea what kind of footwear he favors, but this is a shoe, as opposed to a workman’s boot, so it could be his.”

  “The print looks to be quite recent.”

  “But there is no way of knowing when it was made.”

  “We can see if subsequent prints move in a straight line or if they weave.”

  “Well, they’d have to weave a bit because the path twists and turns.” He sounded testy now and I realized that he was scared we’d confirm his deepest fears.

  “We don’t have to do this, Darcy,” I said, touching his hand. He flinched at my touch, showing how tense he was.

  “Now we’re here we might as well see it through,” he whispered. “Come on, this way.”

  We stepped forward, searching like bloodhounds but finding nothing, not even a second footprint. No scraps of cloth conveniently caught on brambles, nor bloody thumbprints on smooth bark. Of course, it was possible that the Garda had done a thorough job and removed anything that might count as evidence. As we passed through a thick stand of bushes something moved in the underbrush, quite close to us. At first I thought it might be a rabbit or a bird, but I heard something pushing through bushes— something large. I grabbed Darcy’s arm.

  “What could that be?” I hissed.

  “There used to be deer in the park,” Darcy whispered back. “Maybe some of the herd has survived.”

  All the same he moved closer to me. We stood there, alert and hearts beating rather fast, but there was no more sound. In fact the woodland had fallen remarkably quiet again. Through the bare branches of the trees we could now see the vast shape of the castle emerging. A true keep from the Middle Ages, designed to keep out intruders with a great stone bastion around it and small slits of windows on the lower floors. It made Castle Rannoch look positively inviting.

  “I’m surprised there’s not a moat,” I whispered to Darcy.

  “There used to be. They filled it in a couple of hundred years ago.” He grinned at me. “Actually it’s nicer inside than it looks. It was added to in the eighteenth century and the other side has bigger windows and a nice view.”

  A little farther and the woodland ended in a large kitchen garden and outbuildings.

  “We probably shouldn’t go any closer,” Darcy said. “This has been an exercise in futility, hasn’t it? Apart from that one footprint, there is no indication that my father came back this way in a drunken stagger.”

  “What are all those outbuildings?” I asked.

  “Gardener’s cottage, sheds, stables. All that sort of stuff.”

  “Plenty of places for someone to hide,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Just an observation. If someone did want to get in unobserved and kill Roach, he could easily have done so. We know that Mrs. McNalley saw a ghost.”

  “He could just as easily have walked back to the road, let himself out of the main gate and not really have risked being observed,” D
arcy said. “In our day there would have been a pack of servants. Gardeners and grooms would have been around, and of course we had dogs.”

  “Dogs, of course,” I said. “Everyone has dogs, don’t they? Except this American. He couldn’t have, or they would have sounded the alarm at a stranger. Does your father no longer have any dogs either?”

  “He does. We’re down to one very old Labrador, Blackie. But unfortunately we can’t ask the dog if my father staggered out drunk that night and came back with blood on his clothes.”

  “You could check his clothes yourself,” I said. “It’s hard to get bloodstains completely out.”

  “He wouldn’t necessarily have got any blood on his clothing,” Darcy said. “One clean blow. The skull is stove in and the man pitches forward. He drops the club and flees.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Maybe because he hears someone coming. Maybe because he is horrified with what he has just done.”

  “Then why not take the club with you when you flee? Bury it. Throw it in a pond. Burn it.”

  “I agree,” he said. “It makes little sense. We should go back.”

  “It’s a pity we can’t get into the castle, now we’re here.” I stared up at the great gray shape looming above us. “I’d dearly like to see the scene of the crime for myself.”

  “We can’t while that man’s valet is still in residence.” Darcy shook his head.

  “We could keep watch to see if he ever goes out.”

  “And we don’t know there aren’t any Garda stationed in the castle still,” Darcy said.

  “It’s your house. You should know how to creep around without being seen,” I said. “I bet you did as a child.” Now that we were this close, I was itching to see for myself. “Why don’t we give it a try?”

  Darcy looked wary. “All right,” he said.

  We had taken two steps out of the woods and across the kitchen garden when a voice yelled, “Hey, you. What are you doing here?”