Mystery Villa by E.R. Punshon

doubt whether it was really a pearl of price or merely a manufactured bead, had not been paying his companion’s activities much attention, and did not at first take in the full significance of his cry.
    â€˜What’s that?’ he said vaguely. ‘Dead man? Where’s a dead man?’
    He was half smiling as he spoke, for he supposed at first that Wild was making some sort of obscure joke, since, indeed, had he been asked, he would have said there was no place here where a dead man could be, no place less likely in all the world than in the neglect and dirt and solitude of this old deserted house. But when he looked round and saw Wild’s ashen face, the gesture he was making with a shaking hand at the trunk by the side of the room, Bobby realised that here was no question of any pleasantry. All the same, it was in tones of complete bewilderment that he stammered out:
    â€˜A dead man? Why? Where? Dead...?’
    â€˜In there,’ Wild said, and pointed to the trunk.
    He made no effort to approach the trunk again, but, with a quick movement, Bobby crossed the room to it and flung back its lid.
    Within, he saw the crouched, the shrivelled, the almost mummified figure of a man, huddled there in a ghastly similitude of life, and yet in some way proclaiming, too, that here death had brooded for years in terrible concealment.
    Bewildered and shaken, almost disbelieving his eyes that showed him what so incredibly was there, Bobby stood in silence, gazing down at the motionless body, and trying to collect his thoughts the abrupt horror of this discovery had scattered for the moment. The body was fully clothed, and seemed, as far as could be judged from those shrivelled, sunken features, to have been that of a young and goodlooking man. Peeping over Bobby’s shoulder, Wild said, in a whisper:
    â€˜Look at his head; the top of his head.’
    Bobby nodded. Already he had seen and noted the small, round hole there that told where a bullet, fired apparently directly from above, as by someone crouching in a tree or leaning over stairs, had penetrated downwards through the skull, through the brain. Wild spoke again:
    â€˜Did the old woman know? She must have known. Why did she never tell?’
    â€˜She must have known. How could she not have known?’ Bobby said, and the same thought and picture came into both their minds – of that strange old woman passing in this narrow room from youth to age in an existence that had before seemed bizarre and pitiable enough, but now had taken on an aspect of almost unbelievable horror.
    â€˜She must have known,’ Bobby repeated. ‘Think of it, living alone for forty or fifty years with – with That.’
    â€˜Where is she? What’s become of her?’ Wild said, looking all around as if expecting to perceive her now in some equally strange, incredible hiding-place.
    â€˜We must report at once,’ Bobby said.
    â€˜What’s it been?’ Wild asked. ‘Suicide, accident... murder?’
    â€˜I never heard of a man shooting himself down through the top of his head like that,’ Bobby said slowly. ‘Besides, that shot was fired from some distance. If it was only accident, why was the body hidden? It looks to me like murder – murder long ago.’
    â€˜There’s that wedding feast downstairs no one ever came to,’ Wild said slowly. ‘Seems to me perhaps this accounts for that... I thought at first it meant the man had funked it at the last moment, as they do at times, and let the girl down, but now –’ He made a gesture with his hand towards the shrivelled body in the trunk. ‘Is that the man?’ he asked. ‘Is that why he never came to his wedding?’
    â€˜It looks as if it might be that,’ Bobby agreed. ‘Perhaps there was a quarrel, or she found out something... perhaps, then, she hid the body in that trunk she may have bought for the honeymoon tour, and dressed for