Nevertheless, the series of questions that had followed had all been in the very close neighborhood of pistols, so to speak. I itemize what struck me as being their real, if unuttered trend.
"About this man that's dead, Mr. Rooke. You saw his face, of course?"
(Item: Had Maxwell been shot through the head?)
Yes, Monty had seen his face, but so, he ventured to remind the Inspector, had he himself.
"Well, say I had other things to attend to and didn't particularly notice. You'd say he was—pretty bad?"
(Item: So bad that there might have been a little hole on one side of his head and a big one on the other without your noticing it?)
"Rotten," said Monty with an unaffected shiver.
"Bleeding much?"
(Item: Or anything else scattered about?)