Baddeley accepted the situation with good grace. He tried another tack.
“There were three chairs overturned in the billiard room when you entered it. Didn’t that strike you as strange?”
“It did—when I caught sight of ’em. But the corpse caught my eye first—you run across a corpse on a billiard-table first thing in the morning—see whether you notice anything else much—a corpse seems to fill the landscape—you might say. You don’t want no ‘close-up’ of it—believe me.”
This was truth and truth with a vengeance, naked and unashamed. There was no mistaking it. Marshall had put the matter in plain unvarnished terms—with all the cheap humor of her class—but her sincerity was undoubted and it struck home. If we had not been concerned in the investigation of a murder, I think most of us would have laughed outright.
Sir Charles Considine shifted in his chair, uneasily and disapprovingly. Anthony alone seemed completely unperturbed.
Baddeley bent across to Roper. I did not catch all he said, but he seemed very importunate with regard to some point or other, and I heard Roper say, “It’s all right.... I got it when you first put me wise.”
“All right then, Marshall,” said the Inspector. “You can go now; if I want you again, I’ll send for you.”
Anthony leaned across the table, his forefinger extended towards the maid.
“One moment, Marshall.”
“Yes, sir,” she said fretfully.