“Except that Mr. Wainwright and the missus had a fight at dinner,” he said. “The help was talking about it.”

“What kind of a fight?” said Hopper.

“I don’t know,” said O’Brien, looking uneasily at Tony. “Just knocking chairs around. You know.”

The deputy coroner had followed Bessie’s body upstairs. When he came down he said it looked like murder to him, and could he have some breakfast? He had been up since daylight. Case of gas poisoning. “One of these stoves with a rubber tube,” he said. “Death machine, of course. The tube slipped, so—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hell of a job this is,” he said.

They brought him a tray to the library. Hopper was there, Jim, Tony, and Bill Sterling. While the deputy coroner ate bacon and eggs Hopper questioned Tony.

“We quarreled, of course. Pat Abbott was there. She’ll tell you about it.”

“What did you quarrel about?”

Tony hesitated. “She’s dead now,” he said. “I don’t want to discuss her. She’d pulled some pretty dirty work, and I told her so. But I didn’t kill her.”

Hopper said nothing. He went out to the servants’ hall and questioned the servants there. Reynolds, as I have said, was noncommittal, but the other men, Thomas and Stevens, were easier prey. A chair had been overturned, and Mr. Wainwright had slammed the door when he went out. No, they hadn’t been getting along very well. They had separate rooms, and they hardly spoke when they met. Stevens had even overheard Tony’s last words before he banged out of the room. “It’s over and you’re through. Get that and get it right. You’re through.”

Hopper was hot on the trail by now. He sat in the comfortable servants’ hall and went on plugging. He called poor silly old Partridge, and Hilda and Nora. And he called Ethel, the housemaid who cared for Bessie’s rooms, and smiled at her pleasantly. “Now tell me, Ethel, did Mrs. Wainwright have a gun of her own?”

“Why, yes, sir, she did. She slept with it under her pillow.”

“Isn’t that rather unusual? Did the rest of the family do that?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Why do you think she did it, Ethel? You seem to be an observing young woman. She didn’t look as though she would be afraid of much.”

“Well, that’s just it,” said Ethel, succumbing at last. “She was afraid of something. In this house too. Else why did she keep her doors locked?”

“She did that, did she?”

“Yes, sir. Day and night for weeks on end.”

Hopper went back to the library. “Let’s have that story of last night again, Wainwright,” he said. “What did you do after dinner?”

“I had some work to do. I stayed in the study until eleven. At ten-thirty Reynolds brought me in some whiskey.”

“Where was your wife then?”

“Reynolds said she was in the library, reading. I told him to lock up when she went to bed. I didn’t see her myself.”