"It's no use you looking at me like that," said Roger tearfully but resolutely. "I'm as good as you. In fact, I'm better now that I've got Jesus. And I tell you straight, you've killed my mummie with your beastly lust. Mind you," he cried, in a tone of whistling exaltation inappropriate to his words, "I'm not pretending I'm without sin myself. I did evil once with a woman at Blackburn, but I saw the filthiness of my ways. Old man, I do understand your temptations!"
What was Richard's hand searching for on the breakfast table? She bent forward to see, so that she might give it to him.
Richard had found what he wanted. His fingers tightened on the handle of the breadknife.
"Let's put an end to this," he said.
He drove the knife into Roger's heart.
"Mummie!" breathed Roger. Meekly, but with no sign that he had any other quarrel with the proceedings save that they were peremptory, he sank down on the chair beside him and fell forward, his head lying untidily among the tea-cups. This, no doubt, was the disorder which Marion had always foreseen; to prevent which she had practised her insane tidiness.
He held the attention much less than one had thought a dead man could.
"God," said Poppy, "this is a copper's business. I'm off before they come. They think I know something about a thing that happened down in Strood last Easter, though God help me I don't. They kind of mixed me up with someone else. Let me go."
"Right," said Richard, and put his hand into his pocket and brought out a fistful of coins. "Take this. Good luck."
She snatched it, and with no further look at any of the company, ran out by the French window.