“When did Miss Abbott leave?”

“Immediately after dinner, I believe.”

“You went to bed at eleven.”

“About then. You can ask O’Brien. I met him on the second floor.”

“You didn’t leave your room after you went up?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Hopper sat still. When he spoke again his voice was dry. “I’ll put it to you this way, Wainwright. You hated your wife. You wanted her out of the way. I have an idea you’ve been checking up on her past. As a matter of fact, I know you have. And you probably didn’t like what you found.”

“I didn’t. That doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“I’ve not said that,” said Hopper. “I do say this. You’re in love with another woman, and your wife wouldn’t give you a divorce. Maybe she was holding out for a larger settlement. Maybe things just happened to suit her as they are. It doesn’t look too good, Wainwright. You threatened her, and—”

“I never threatened her. Not with bodily harm.”

“All right. Admit that for a minute. We’ve had three deaths here, all of them violent. I’ll grant that a dozen people might have wanted to kill Don Morgan. Who wanted to kill your mother? Sorry, but we’ve got to go back to that. Look at her will. Who profited by it? The servants got a little. Elliott gets twenty thousand which is chicken feed to him. Pat Abbott got five thousand dollars and a bracelet, but she didn’t know she was to get them. Charity got a lot, but we can’t claim that the rector of St. Mark’s committed a crime to get a new organ for the church. I don’t mean to be flippant.

“All right. Your wife got a dollar, but she had you to draw on. And you got the whole estate.”

“So I killed my mother,” Tony said thickly. “My mother and my wife! By God—”

He made a lunge at the detective, but Jim caught him in time. “Stop it, Tony,” he said. “What’s the use? You’re not helping anything, including yourself.”

Hopper remained undisturbed. “I’m going to ask you a question,” he said. “If you’ll tell the truth you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble later. Did your wife know anything that made her afraid of being killed?” He grinned. “I’m leaving you out for a minute,” he said, not unkindly. “Suppose she wasn’t afraid of you, but of somebody else. Have you any idea who, or why?”

“No. Except that we’d had two crimes here. That would scare any woman.”

They left him there, Jim Conway to go back to his office to wait for the cablegram which had not come, and Hopper to face an irate district attorney.

“Looks as though your case against Stoddard has got another hole in it, chief,” he finished, after detailing the facts. “I passed the attorneys for the defense on the road, hellbent for Beverly. What do you bet they’ll move to quash the indictment?”

“What’s this murder got to do with Stoddard? Tony Wainwright wants to get rid of his wife, and does it. That’s easy.”