"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heard was a brief uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep" (230-231).
Finally the title of the story is tied in!
Who cares where you are left once your dead? Its not like the person could be more or less comfortable, right? "The Big Sleep" = Death. There is nothing where your thoughts once were.
Marlow's involvement has now made him just as responsible for all of the deaths on the story as the one's he had personally caused. By knowing who the real killer and not reporting it, he was just as guilty. BUT he did not feel the General needed to know these things. It would only hurt the old man. After all, he would (much sooner than later) be dead too.
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