“Thick! It's damnable!” Kenneth shot out. “What's the use of Arnold's being murdered if we're saddled with Roger?”
Violet, who had been sitting in a kind of frozen silence, now said, in a sharpened voice: “Please! Must you talk like that?”
No one paid any attention to her; Antonia sat glowering at Roger, Kenneth continued to walk up and down, and Roger, glancing from one to the other, said cautiously: “What was that you said? Sometimes I think I'm getting a bit deaf. I wish you wouldn't tramp about so; it's a fidgeting sort of habit. Makes me giddy.”
“Arnold's dead,” said Antonia briefly.
He blinked at her, apparently incredulous. “My brother Arnold?”
“Yes, of course. Do you think we know hundreds of Arnolds?”
“But he can't be dead!”
“I tell you he is.”
“Well, that's a very extraordinary thing. Of course, if you say he is, I daresay you may be right, but I don't understand it at all. What did he die of?”
“He died of a knife in the back!” Kenneth flung over his shoulder.