“No. I prefer to deal with the affair myself.”
“Very well. I will commence with you personally. Why did you quarrel with your brother in London a few days before his death?”
“Because I was living extravagantly. Not only that, but he disapproved of my manner of life. In those days I was headstrong and wilful. I loved a Bohemian existence combined with absurd luxury, or rather, a wildly useless expenditure of money. No one who knows me now could picture me then. Yet now I am good and unhappy. Then I was wicked, in some people’s eyes, and happy. Strange, is it not?”
“Not altogether so unusual as you may think. Was any other person interested in what I may term the result of the dispute between your brother and yourself?”
“That is a difficult question to answer. I was very careless in money matters, but it is clear that the curtailment of my rate of living from £15,000 to £5,000 per annum must make considerable difference to all connected with me.”
“Had you been living at the former rate?”
“Yes, since my father’s death. What annoyed Alan was the fact that I had borrowed from money-lenders.”
“Who else knew of your disagreement with him besides these money-lenders and his solicitors?”
“All my friends. I used to laugh at his serious ways, when I, older and much more experienced in some respects, treated life as a tiresome joke. But none of my friends were commissioned to murder my brother so that I might obtain the estate, Mr. Brett.”
“Not by you,” he said thoughtfully.