The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah Page B

‘That’s all there is to it,’ as I recall. Perhaps
    if I had tried to find out more—” Negus broke off, an
    anguished expression on his face.
    “You must not blame yourself, Mr. Negus,” said
    Poirot. “You did not cause your brother’s death.”
    “I couldn’t help thinking that . . . well, that
    something dreadful must have happened to him in that
    village. And one doesn’t like to speak or think about
    things of that nature if one can help it.” Henry Negus
    sighed. “Richard certainly didn’t want to talk about it,
    whatever it was, so I took the view that it was better
    not talked about. He was the one with the authority,
    you see—the older brother. Everybody deferred to
    him. He had a brilliant mind, you know.”
    “Indeed?” Poirot smiled kindly.
    “Oh, no one paid attention to detail like Richard,
    before his decline. Meticulous, he was, in everything
    he did. You would entrust anything to him—anybody
    would. That was why he was so successful as a
    lawyer, before things went badly wrong. I always
    believed that he would right himself one day. When he
    seemed to perk up a few months ago, I thought,
    ‘Finally, he has regained his appetite for life.’ I hoped
    he might have been thinking about working again,
    before every last penny of his money ran out—”
    “Mr. Negus, if you would please slow down a
    little,” said Poirot, polite but insistent. “Your brother
    did not at first work when he moved into your home?”
    “No. As well as Great Holling and Ida Gransbury,
    Richard left behind his profession when he came to
    Devon. Instead of practicing the law, he shut himself
    away in his room and practiced drinking heavily.”
    “Ah. The decline you mentioned?”
    “Yes,” said Negus. “It was a very different
    Richard that arrived at my house from the one I had
    last encountered. He was so withdrawn and dour. It
    was as if he had built a wall around himself. He never
    left the house—saw no one, wrote to no one, received
    no letters. All he did was read books and stare into
    space. He refused to accompany us to church and
    would not relent even to please my wife. One day,
    after he had been with us for about a year, I found a
    Bible outside his door, on the landing floor. It had
    been in a drawer in the bedroom we had given him. I
    tried to put it back there, but Richard made it clear
    that he wished to banish it from the room. I must
    confess that after that incident, I asked my wife
    whether . . . well, whether we ought to ask him to find
    a home elsewhere. It was rather disconcerting to have
    him around. But Clara—that’s my wife—she wouldn’t
    hear of it. ‘Family’s family,’ she said. ‘We’re all
    Richard has. You don’t turn family out onto the street.’
    She was quite right, of course.”
    “You referred to your brother spending money
    excessively?” I said.
    “Yes. He and I were both left very comfortably
    off.” Henry Negus shook his head. “The idea that my
    responsible older brother Richard would tear through
    his fortune with no care for the future . . . and yet
    that’s what he did. He seemed intent on converting
    what our father had left him into liquor and pouring it
    down his throat. He was heading for penury and
    serious illness, I feared. Some nights I lay awake
    worrying about the terrible end that might lie in store
    for him. Not murder, though. I never thought for a
    moment that Richard would be murdered, though
    perhaps I should have wondered.”
    Poirot looked up, instantly alert. “Why would you
    wonder such a thing, monsieur? Most of us assume
    that our relations will not be murdered. It is a
    reasonable assumption in almost all cases.”
    Henry Negus thought for a while before answering.
    Finally he said, “It would be fanciful to say that
    Richard seemed to know that he would be murdered,
    for who can know? But from the day that he moved
    into my home, he had the morose, doom-laden
    comportment of a man whose life had already