Roy is arrested for stealing morphine

Roy Watzka’s arrest for stealing morphine is not a straightforward resolution of the theft: Sheriff Hock already knows the circumstances, and Fidelis has been paying for the medicine. Instead, Hock makes the arrest while quietly pursuing another unanswered question—the deaths in Roy’s cellar. Roy goes to jail without resistance, but his sober attention to the cell’s filth, and Delphine’s immediate fear of what the arrest means, expose how much has changed since his drinking once made him indifferent to everything around him.

Background and Hock’s Suspicion

Sheriff Hock has spent years handling offenses that are either petty or beyond his reach. Farm foreclosures particularly trouble him. Roy’s farm has repeatedly come close to being auctioned, but each time Roy has somehow found the money for his loan at the last moment, then drunk until the next payment came due. The cycle ends, for the first time in years, when Roy pays the bank on time. Hock attributes the change to Delphine’s return, linking her presence to her father’s newfound reliability.

Hock is also trying to decide what to make of the three people who died in Roy’s cellar. He would like to close the case as a terrible mistake: people can get locked in cellars, and the wake had been disorganized. But the deaths’ grotesque circumstances remain lodged in his mind—the mixture of peach juice, ornamental beads, and dog excrement, and especially the beads. They revive his humiliation and his fixation on Clarisse. The cellar deaths are not simply an old case in the background; they shape the suspicion with which he approaches Roy’s arrest.

Hock finds Roy’s apparent deafness to the sounds beneath his house odd, yet he does not share the town’s confidence that Roy is guilty. He considers Roy basically harmless, even if he is drunk much of the time, and recognizes that something is missing from the information available to him. Rather than conclude that Roy caused the deaths, Hock sees the morphine file as an opportunity: an arrest might shake loose a fact. He reads a document, decides on a course of action, and slips it into his pocket before leaving his office.

The Arrest and Roy’s Changed Conduct

The arrest comes on a brisk, golden afternoon, long after the theft itself. Fidelis had gone to Hock immediately after it happened and explained the situation. He had also been paying Sal Birdy a little each month for the medicine, and Sal had accepted the arrangement. Hock nevertheless acts as if the investigation has only just begun and arrests Roy for the morphine theft.

Roy goes peacefully, seemingly resigned to being jailed. He knows the cell from earlier stays, when he had been so drunk that its stained walls, tattered blanket, and reeking waste bucket scarcely registered. This time, sobriety makes those conditions impossible to ignore. Before asking whether his daughter knows what has happened, Roy requests pine-scented ammonia—the cleaning fluid he had used to make the chicken house habitable—along with a mop, bucket, water, brush, and rags. He pushes the old blanket through the bars and tries to beat the bugs out of the mattress. The arrest therefore produces a sharp contrast: the familiar jail holds a man who is no longer numb to his surroundings.

Roy’s first concern is not to secure news of Delphine but to clean the cell. That practical, almost fastidious response makes his sobriety legible in action. Hock is amazed by it. The arrest does not itself undo Roy’s vulnerability or establish his innocence; it reveals a changed relation to his immediate circumstances, even as he is placed back in a setting where he had previously been unable to care.

Delphine and Hock’s Probe

Before informing Delphine, Hock makes preparations to spy on what she does after hearing the news. At Waldvogel’s, Delphine understands as soon as he enters that her father is in trouble. She had feared that the calm period since her return was too good to last, and now expects humiliation as well as bad news: Tante is in the shop, speaking with Fidelis nearby. Delphine hopes their conversation will keep them from coming within earshot, but the voices stop just as Hock is about to speak. Tante hears the announcement, making the arrest public within the household and likely to be repeated around town.

Hock delivers the news with a deliberate air of theatrical gravity, as though taking on the role of bearer of bad tidings. Delphine, in turn, feels that she is performing a part in a scene whose words have already been rehearsed. Her response is controlled: she asks to see Roy and asks how much bail will cost. Hock says the amount will be determined by the town judge, Roland Zumbrugge, and that she may pay it to secure Roy’s release. He adds that Roy is settling in very well, a remark made pointed by the contrast between Roy’s new sobriety and his earlier drunken stays.

Delphine answers with sarcasm, then insists that Roy did not commit the crime and is harmless. Hock has been waiting for precisely this kind of response. He cautiously avoids confirming what charge she thinks has brought him to the shop, because he hopes her assumption will reveal what she knows. Delphine’s defense of Roy thus gives Hock an opening to test her, but it does not establish that she knows anything about the cellar deaths. His warning that nobody is entirely harmless when drunk turns suspicion into a generalized judgment, and his advice to find a good lawyer leaves Delphine facing the cost of defending her father.

A Legal Case Used to Pursue Another Mystery

The arrest joins two unresolved matters without proving that they are the same. Roy is formally taken in for stealing morphine, although Fidelis had already explained the arrangement with Sal Birdy and was making payments for the medicine. Hock’s other concern is the cellar deaths, but he has no certainty that Roy is responsible. His instinct that information is missing leads him to use the arrest and Delphine’s reaction as possible means of investigation.

The scene’s tension comes from that mismatch between the declared charge and the question Hock is really trying to answer. To Delphine, the arrest threatens the fragile calm she has recovered and puts her father’s freedom, reputation, and legal defense at risk. To Hock, it offers a chance to observe her and perhaps unsettle a secret. To Roy, it is a return to a familiar cell, now encountered soberly and met first with cleaning tools. The arrest therefore advances the cellar mystery while also marking a concrete change in Roy: the man who once endured confinement without noticing it now begins by trying to make the place habitable.