But they did not want to turn such a page again, nor even to glance at it; and thus, concerning the explosion at the old Sullivan cottage, they kept a guarded, slightly satirical silence. For now, it seemed – even as late as 1943, with some of the lads away to the damned British war in spite of it all – even now, something had blown up again in Cloncraig; and there was danger in this renewal of the past, there were too many dark affinities, too many people involved. Cloncraig wanted no more trouble of any sort, and certainly not the gunpowder sort, the police sort, the eternal questioning and the prying from above.

Thus Authority – never very zealous in any case – met with a blank wall in its investigations: Cloncraig played dumb, and added a little to its public grief in order to shame private inquiry. Certainly there had been a fearful accident – three children killed, and a fourth driven out of her senses; but it was an accident in a vacuum, a terrible happening with no outer connections, and calling for no more investigation than would a typhoon or a cruel drought. It had just happened, that was all; and Cloncraig needed no coroner, asking awkward questions, to intrude either upon its past history or its present sorrow.

So much for the inquest, and for lame Authority, which soon gave up its researches. But in such places as the hotel – the Cloncraig Arms – gossip, looking over its shoulder from time to time, explored the truth about the explosion. There were many known facts to go upon; and nowhere was truth under more accurate appraisal than in one corner of the hotel’s private bar, where the three bereaved parents – James Costello, Paddy Finane, and old Neil Fairlie – nightly assuaged their bereavement and were, by agreement, left alone to do so.

The landlord, Joe Lane, kept an eye on their needs, but for the rest he followed public sentiment in letting them be. The only one of the three who might give him cause for worry was James Costello – not because of the double bereavement he had suffered, but because Costello, an intermittent tippler already, might trade on that bereavement beyond what was seemly or tolerable. But there again, who was to judge him? At a time like this, a man needed a drink – many drinks, indeed – and should be reasonably free to take them, and find what comfort he could in the process.

There were many of these long sessions in the Cloncraig Arms, and some of them finished with tears, and some of them came near to ending in blows: for the liquor was never stinted – the three of them found plenty of friends in their sorrow, and many times the price of a drink was pushed across the counter towards Joe Lane, with a covert nod in their direction. It was on one such evening, but early on before they had taken over-much, that the trio reached its conclusions about the accident.