(6) Tony Wainwright. Improbable, if he knew story. Otherwise had plenty of time. But if he did not know facts had no motive.

(7) Margery Stoddard. Might have killed Morgan, with Julian later disposing of body. Not in trunk room last night. Nurse says sleepless night but not out of room.

He must have thought for a while, for then he wrote:

(8) Audrey Morgan. May have known the facts. Pretty anxious to pin something on somebody. Against it, crazy about father. Also not strong enough unless Hamilton boy helped her. Did Morgan tell her? Pretty young, but might have been desperate.

He was still working with the list when Hopper called up from town. “Got a line on Evans,” he said. “At least it looks like it. I’m coming down.”

“How’d you do it?”

“Groceries,” said Hopper. “That’s what a man can do without everything but.”

They ate dinner that night at the Beverly Hotel. Jim told what he had found in the trunk room and gave him some of the letters to read. Hopper was duly impressed.

“Good work,” he said. “Doesn’t help much, however. New angle, of course.”

“Rather helps Stoddard, don’t you think?”

“Not with Stewart on the case it won’t,” said Hopper, eating canned-blueberry pie.

No, he hadn’t got Evans. But he had found where he had been hiding out. Through groceries, as he had said.

“If he was alive he had to eat,” he said. “We canvassed every grocery store and butcher shop in the county. He’d been in a deserted house across the river. Had a bicycle, and went in to a little town called Coventry twice a week for food.” He finished his pie and produced a wooden toothpick for the seeds. “Might interest you to know the place belonged to Stoddard.”

“Good God! What does that mean?”

“Stewart thinks it means a hell of a lot. According to him, Evans was out of the hospital the night Morgan was killed. He saw something, and Stoddard bribed him to get out. That was the three thousand dollars he drew and wouldn’t account for. Remember?”

“Where is he now?”

“Well, we’ve lost him for a while,” said Hopper. “We’ll get him. He still has to eat. But he sure got out in a hurry. We found the bicycle ten miles down the river at Coventry. He could have taken a boat across to the railroad. There’s one missing. Or he could have gone down quite a ways before he landed. Folks at the grocery store said he didn’t talk. He’d come in, load up, and get away. But he bought the newspapers. They had orders to save them for him until he came.”

It was Hopper’s idea that something had scared Evans off. Not anything in the newspapers. He had been over them. Maybe he thought he had been recognized. Maybe something happened. Anyhow, he had not been seen for some time. But Jim was thinking.

“See here,” he said. “What about Haines?”