At Culleen the watch wasn’t missed for some time. Drawers were searched, furniture was pulled out in case it had fallen down behind something. The general belief was that it would eventually turn up.
In fact it didn’t, and one afternoon when Mrs Dallon was washing eggs at the sink she remembered the feeling of surprise when Mary Louise had said she’d like to see her old room again. The statements that had been made by Rose and Matilda returned to startle her and suddenly, an egg held in the palm of her hand, Mrs Dallon felt sick. Waves of nausea passed through her stomach. She felt weak in her legs and for a moment as she stood there she thought she might faint.
‘I’ve come to see Mary Louise,’ she announced in Quarry’s an hour later.
Rose’s response was to glance along the counter to where Matilda was re-rolling a bolt of satin.
‘I rang the bell on the front door,’ Mrs Dallon said. ‘Only there wasn’t an answer.’
‘Your daughter could be out on her bicycle, Mrs Dallon. Then again I doubt your daughter can hear the doorbell up in the attic’
Through the panes of the accounting-office window Mrs Dallon could see the square head of her son-in-law bent over the desk where he did his work. By now she knew the way through the shop into the house.
‘I’ll go up and see if she’s in,’ she said.
Neither Rose nor Matilda tried to stop her. Let her see for herself, both simultaneously thought. Let her climb up the stairs and not be answered when she knocks on the door.
But Mrs Dallon was answered. As soon as she spoke, the key turned in the lock and the door was opened. Mary Louise was tidily dressed, in a navy-blue skirt and blouse, with a brooch that Mrs Dallon had once given her at her throat.
‘Hullo, Mary Louise.’
‘We’ll go downstairs.’
The key was taken from the lock, and the door locked on the outside. In the front room Mary Louise asked her mother if she’d like a cup of tea.
‘No, no, pet. Nothing at all.’
‘Are you well at Culleen?’
‘We are, Mary Louise. We’re all well.’
‘That’s good so.’
Mrs Dallon hesitated. She felt uncomfortable, sitting on the edge of a tightly-stuffed armchair; and was made more so by Mary Louise’s unruffled manner, her air of being calmly in command of herself.
‘That day you came out to Culleen, Mary Louise? A while ago?’
Mary Louise nodded.
‘You went up to your aunt’s room.’
Mary Louise frowned. She shook her head. Then the frown cleared as swiftly as it had come. She made a gesture with her hands, indicating that she couldn’t remember going into her aunt’s room. It hardly mattered, the gesture implied also.
‘It’s only we’ve been hunting high and low for a watch she had there. A watch that used to be Robert’s.’
Mary Louise nodded sympathetically.
‘You didn’t see it that day, pet? A watch on a chain?’
‘He’d have wanted me to have it. If he’d known he was going to die he’d have given it to me.’
The same sickness she had experienced while washing the eggs again afflicted Mrs Dallon. A prickly discomfort affected areas of her body. She was glad she was sitting down.
‘Did you take the watch, pet?’
Mary Louise said she’d looked for the watch and eventually had opened a drawer in the bedside table and there it was.
‘That watch isn’t yours, Mary Louise. It belongs to Aunt Emmeline.’
‘Actually it belonged to Robert’s father. It was the only thing of value he left behind. You can hardly count the soldiers.’
Since neither Mrs Dallon nor her sister had attended the auction they were unaware of the purchases Mary Louise had made. When her mother now displayed bewilderment over her reference to soldiers Mary Louise explained immediately. She had bought the soldiers, she said, and the furniture from her cousin’s bedroom. She didn’t mention buying the clothes from the unemployed man’s wife because for the moment that didn’t seem relevant.
‘Oh, Mary Louise! Oh, my dear child!’
Unsteadily, Mrs Dallon rose and crossed to where Mary Louise was standing, between the windows. She put her arms around her daughter. She stroked her hair. She had to blink back tears, and was surprised to find – having stepped back a few paces and blown her nose – that Mary Louise herself was still quite composed, was in fact smiling, as though amused.
‘You’re not well, child.’
Mary Louise denied that. She repeated that her cousin would have given her the watch had he known he was going to die that night. They’d often spoken about his father. They’d often wondered what exactly his father had been like.
‘Oh, Mary Louise!’
Mrs Dallon sat down again. I am never going to leave this room, she thought. I cannot leave her. I cannot walk away. The prickles of discomfort had gone from her shoulders. She no longer felt sick in her stomach, but all over her body she was aware of a coldness, like ice in her bloodstream.
‘They’re funny names,’ Mary Louise said. ‘Funny names for Letty to choose. Kevin Aloysius.’
‘We weren’t talking about that, dear.’
‘Well, there you are.’
Afterwards Mrs Dallon repeated to her sister and her husband every statement Mary Louise had made. She recalled the inflections in her speech, her smiles, the way she had remained standing between the two windows of the big front room, the way she had not appeared to notice the disjointed wildness of the conversation. The bad news was not shared with James, since it was considered that at present no one was capable of breaking it to him as gently as his youth deserved. That night neither of the Dallons slept. They lay in silence in their bedroom, the room in which all other family worries had been discussed over the years. Mrs Dallon could still hear the sound of traffic in the street below while her daughter went on so, saying she was all right and commenting on the names chosen for Letty’s baby.
‘I’m worried, Mrs Dallon,’ Elmer said, arriving at Culleen in Kilkelly’s car during the afternoon of the next day. ‘A terrible thing’s after happening.’
He meant the poisoning of the rissoles; and the Dallons, who had imagined that nothing worse could occur than the filching of the watch, realized within a minute that they were wrong. In order to avoid worrying them further, Letty had passed on nothing of the accusation that a safe had been broken into. They heard about this now. They heard about the furniture arriving in the house.
‘They can exaggerate,’ Elmer conceded. ‘Rose and Matilda can. They can be extravagant in what they say. So that at first you wouldn’t believe them, but then you’d have to.’
A nightmare of understanding formed in the kitchen. Isolated fragments connected, like jigsaw pieces transformed into a picture.
‘For God’s sake, what caused it?’ Mr Dallon muttered.
The question was too complicated for Elmer to answer. He wanted to say that he had married Mary Louise in good faith, that he was the last person who’d go about making inquiries about a prospective wife. Instead, he said nothing.
‘But why,’ Mrs Dallon whispered, ‘why would she do that with the rat poison?’
‘Any more, why would she buy furniture when the house is full of it, Mrs Dallon? You have to ask that, too.’
The watch was not mentioned. The feeling was that the watch was a Dallon matter, that knowledge of it was not yet a son-in-law’s concern.
‘My sisters don’t know about what I told you,’ Elmer said. ‘They know about the money but not the other. I don’t think they’d stop in the house if they knew.’
‘We had a word with Dr Cormican after your sisters came out here a while back,’ Mr Dallon said.
‘I heard they came out here.’
‘They came out and told us things.’
Elmer softly sighed. He said:
‘There’ll be steps I’ll have to take.’
‘What steps?’ Mrs Dallon cried, suddenly shrill.