“On that night,” she said, sitting white and still in her chintz-covered living room at the Farm, “I had promised to have some money for her. She left the club, and I met her on the footpath. She wanted a thousand dollars that time, and I had had to sell a bracelet to get it.”

But with Bessie out, Hopper still had Tony in mind. He outlined his case against him the day after Julian’s arrest. He had driven to Beverly, and he and Jim had a private sitting of their own.

“What about Wainwright?” he asked. “His wife had been intimate with Morgan in Paris. He had a row with Morgan when he came back, and we have only his own word it was about the daughter. Later his wife takes a drive at night with Morgan. Maybe he didn’t like her much, but he wouldn’t stand for that.”

He pointed out, too, that Tony had no alibi for the night of Don’s murder. “Maybe it’s just a fool idea,” he said. “But look at the facts. He took his wife in his car to the club that night. They probably quarreled about something. At any rate she came back without him. He returned at one-thirty that morning. Says he was walking around on the golf course. Fine lot of pedestrians you have around here, Conway.”

“I see,” Jim said grimly. “He didn’t give a damn for his wife, but he killed her lover. And what about his mother? Maybe you have that fixed up too!”

He had. He pointed out that Maud when he—Hopper—had seen her on the day after the murder had been shocked but that was all. She was still all right on Monday morning. Then without any warning, as if somebody had hit her on the head with a hammer, she had a heart attack that almost killed her.

“Suppose Tony told her that morning?” he said. “His rooms are near hers. He says, ‘Sorry, Mother, but I’ve been a bad boy. I killed Cock Robin.’ He goes out, and she drops as if she’d been pole-axed. Something happened to her that day. You can bet your bottom dollar on that.”

“So she committed suicide!” said Jim. “We go to the devil of a lot of trouble to prove she was murdered. Now it’s suicide.”

“I haven’t said it was suicide,” said Hopper, and took his tall gangling body back to town.

I escaped some of the excitement following Julian’s arrest, although Amy said the town was hissing like a tea-kettle. Nobody who knew him believed him guilty. Margery’s identity was still being kept secret and there seemed to be no motive whatever for Julian to have killed Don Morgan. The Hunt Club held an indignation, meeting and sent a delegation to the district attorney’s office. It returned chastened. Stewart had spread his fat hands on the desk and glowered at them.

“Stoddard had a motive, gentlemen,” he said. “When I’m good and ready it will be told. Now I advise you to go back to your horses and chase your little foxes or rabbits or what it is you chase. I’m busy.”