Chapter 60: The Ring in the Safe

Ronan did not answer me. He got up and went to the fire and put a sod on it and stood with his back to me and his hands on the mantelpiece.

"There is a thing about the ring," he said. "The ring in the tin box is the true ring and it has a name inside the band and the name is Siobhan and the date is 1921. But there is a second ring. The one in the frame in the hall is a copy and it has been on the Alpha's finger for twenty years and it has a name inside the band too." He turned round. "I have seen it. She took it off in this kitchen in 1994 when her finger swelled in the summer and she put it on the table and I picked it up and looked inside it. And the name inside the band of the copy is not Siobhan and the date is not 1921. The name inside the band of the copy is Eileen and the date is 1961."

I sat at the table with the true ring on my finger.

"Then the copy was made in 1961," I said. "For the woman who took the seat. And the true ring was in the press in the hall from 1961 until 1989 and then my sister took it out and gave it to Bridget and Bridget gave it to the Alpha and the Alpha put it in the box under the floor of the hall and it has been there since March." I looked at the ring on my finger. "And there is a thing I have not asked. The ring in the tin box in the press. It was in the press with the green book and the seal and the bundle of papers. And my sister wrote in her letter that she found the second book in the press behind the frame in February. So the ring was in the press in February. And my sister took it out and gave it to Bridget and Bridget gave it to the Alpha. And the Alpha put it under the floor of the hall. So how is it in the press tonight?"

Ronan came back to the table. He sat down slowly.

"Because someone put it back," he said.

"Someone put it back." I took the ring off my finger and turned it over in the lamp light. "And there is only one wolf in this village who has a key to the press and a reason to put the true ring back in it. And she told me tonight in the back room of the hall that she was going to resign the seat in the morning." I put the ring down on the table. "Mairéad put it back. She put the true ring back in the press tonight after she talked to me and before I went in through the window. She put it back so that I would find it and so that Ahern would find it and so that the co-op would see the true ring of Maeve in the hall on the morning she resigned."

Ronan was looking at the ring.

"There is a thing about the ring that I have not told you," he said. "It was in the tin box in the press in 1961 and it was in the tin box in the press when your sister took it out in February. And the tin box in the press tonight is the same tin box. And there is a print on the lid of that tin box." He looked up. "The print that your sister rubbed with a pencil and sent to Athlone. The print of a hand in the dust with four fingers and a thumb. That print is on the lid of the tin box in the press and the tin box is in front of us and the print is still on it."

I picked up the tin box and turned it to the lamp. There was the dust and there was the print and there was the shape of a hand in it, four fingers on the top and a thumb on the side.

"Padraig has the rubbing," I said. "And Margaret has the rubbing and the ring and the page and she is going to put them on the bus in the morning. And Ahern is going to compare the print on the lid with the print of the Alpha's hand on the cup and he is going to match them and he is going to put it in the file." I put the tin box down. "But there is a thing we have not looked at and it has been in front of us since the first night. The print on the lid of the tin box is a hand with four fingers on the top and a thumb on the side. That is a right hand on the top and a left thumb on the side. A right hand goes on the top of a box if the wolf is standing in front of it and the box is on a shelf at chest height. A left thumb goes on the side if the wolf is standing to the left of it." I looked at Ronan. "The Alpha is right handed. Every wolf in this village knows it. She writes with her right hand and she counts the votes with her right hand and she signs the papers with her right hand. So if she took the tin box off the shelf she would put her right hand on the top and her left hand on the side and the thumb on the side would be her left thumb."

Ronan was very still.

"And the print on the lid," he said. "The thumb is on the side. Is it a left thumb or a right thumb?"

I turned the box round and looked at the print in the lamplight and put my own hand against it. My right hand went on the top and my left thumb went to the side and my left thumb did not fit the print. I put my right thumb to the side and it fit.

"It is a right thumb," I said. "The wolf who took the box off the shelf put her right hand on the top and her right thumb on the side. That is a wolf who was standing to the right of the shelf and reaching across with her right hand. That is a wolf who is left handed."

Ronan put his hand over his mouth.

"The Alpha is right handed," he said.

"The Alpha is right handed." I sat back. "So the print on the lid is not the Alpha's print. It is the print of a left handed wolf who took the box off the shelf in the press. And there is only one left handed wolf in this village who has ever had a reason to take a tin box out of that press and there is a thing about her that I have been looking at since the first night and have not seen." I stood up. "Ronan. In December, when the Alpha told my sister that her bond with Declan was false and put a false mark on the two of them, she needed a scent to make the false bond with. A wolf's scent. The scent of the wolf she was going to put on Declan. And a false marking takes a great deal of power and it leaves a mark that is wrong and the wolves who had it done to them are never right after." I looked at him. "Who in this village has a scent that smells of Declan?"

Ronan's old face was white.

"His mother," he said. "Deirdre. And Deirdre is in the ground on the hill since 1981."

"Then it is not his mother." I came round the table. "Who is his blood? Who in this village is the blood of Fionn the Beta and of Deirdre his wife and has a scent that a false marking could be made with?"

Ronan stood up. He went to the shelf and took down a book and opened it and ran his finger down a page and stopped.

"There is a thing in the parish record," he said. "I have looked at this page a hundred times and I have never read the line at the bottom. Deirdre, wife of Fionn, died 1981. And under it, in my grandfather's hand: Deirdre bore two children. A son, Declan, born 1952. And a daughter, born 1975, who was taken from this village in the same year and given to a family in the north and whose name is not written in this book."

The wind came up and the window rattled.

"Declan has a sister," I said. "A sister born in 1975 and taken out of this village in 1975 and given to a family in the north. And she is forty two years old and she is left handed and she has a scent that a false bond can be made with and she has been banished from this territory since 1988 and she has been waiting twenty years in the north for a wolf of the line of Maeve to come to her." I put my hand on the table. "Ronan. What was the name of the family in the north?"

Ronan looked at the page.

"The name in the book is Mac Carthaigh," he said. "And there is a note under it that says the child was given to a woman called Eileen who was going to Galway and who was to bring her up as her own."