Mystery Villa (9 page)

‘Poor soul!' Wild said, below his breath, at last. ‘Poor soul! But no police affair, and nothing we can do.'

Bobby did not reply, and Wild moved forward and slowly walked the length of the table behind the ranged chairs, and then came back to where Bobby stood.

‘Hadn't we better go?' he asked. ‘Somehow I wouldn't much like it if she came back and found we had been nosing round.'

But Bobby seemed hardly to hear; he was still deep in his own puzzled thoughts till, at last, he roused himself enough to ask:

‘Do you think this explains it?'

‘Well, don't it?' Wild retorted. ‘Anyone can see what happened. Everything was ready, everybody all dressed up, most likely they went off to the church, and then something went wrong – the man never turned up, perhaps. Funked it at the last moment, and did a bunk, or else another woman waiting at the church to say he was married already – I've known it happen. The man who plays a trick like that wants shooting – only shooting's too good for him, and the woman often takes it hard like. It ain't so much being made a fool of, it's being – well, mocked, if you see what I mean, so there's nothing ever after you feel that you can trust.'

‘I daresay a thing like that would take some getting over,' Bobby agreed.

But he did not move, for his thoughts were still busy, and Wild went back to look at the table again.

‘Wine still in the decanters,' he said. ‘There's what looks as if it was an ice-pail, over there, with bottles of champagne still in it. I wonder what the stuff's like now? Anyhow, that's why the safe in the butler's pantry was empty – all the silver laid out here, and all black as night, too, glass and silver and all. Worth money, I should say. The tablecloth's all rotten though, and the serviettes, too – moth, most like. Lend me that electric torch of yours, will you?'

He took the electric torch Bobby had been using, and by its light examined closely the dishes standing on the table, untouched since first they had been placed there so long ago. In some of them was visible a brown and crumbling dust, all that was left of the foods they had once contained. On others the mice had evidently held high revel, bones they had gnawed clean lying where the busy little creatures had deserted them when they offered no more nourishment. And, over all, the ceaselessly working spiders had spread their webs, as Time spreads its web of oblivion over all the works of man.

‘Mice been enjoying themselves here,' Wild remarked presently. ‘Must have been real, good, first-class tuck-out all ready, and then the young man turned up missing, and the girl shut the door, and all the guests went home, tongues clacking like one o'clock, I'll be bound; and looks as though not a soul had ever opened that door since until you and me. First of all the food would go bad, and then it would all dry up, what was left of it, and all the time the mice as busy as you please, and after them the spiders. If you've seen enough,' he added, to Bobby, ‘what about clearing out? Gives me the shivers in here, for it's more like being in a grave than's right and proper before you're dead. And now we know all about it, and why the poor old soul took to living the way she does, we've nothing more to do that I can see.'

‘We hardly know all about it, do we?' Bobby said slowly. ‘We know how it began, perhaps, but we don't know what made Con Conway run for his life the other night, or why that girl we saw here was in such a panic, or why the young chap Mrs Rice talks about was walking round with a revolver in his hand.'

‘A place like this is enough to put the wind up anyone,' declared Wild. ‘Why, I've a sort of feeling myself that, if we don't look out, past days will catch hold of us so we'll never get free again.'

‘Yes, I know,' answered Bobby, shivering a little himself. ‘But that's not the sort of fear that sends a man like Con Conway panicking through the streets full tilt, or makes you walk about with a revolver in your hand. And, whatever it was that scared them all, they all experienced it at different times and on different days. So, either it was something different each time – and what could happen in a house like this to frighten different people so badly on different days? – or else there is something here more than a wedding-breakfast laid out forty years ago and never eaten, something that frightens out of their lives everyone who sees it. And what can that be?'

Wild looked worried.

‘Well, putting it like that–' he conceded. After a pause, he added: ‘I've never seen anything like this before – never.'

‘I think we had better have a good look round,' Bobby said.

They closed the door of the room, and went back into the hall and up the stairs, whereon the rotting, mould-grown, moth-eaten carpet showed, however, some signs of occasional use.

On the first floor they entered, in succession, the two large bedrooms; each with a small dressing-room attached, that occupied the front of the house. All four apartment presented the same spectacle of moth-eaten, mice-infested desolation, with cobwebs and spiders triumphant everywhere, as though they knew the final victory was theirs. Apparently a good deal of the furniture these rooms had once held had been broken up for fuel, and even some of the flooring had met the same fate, as had the door and shelving of one or two cupboards. In one room where the flooring had suffered most quite a big patch in one corner having been pulled up, the carpet had been rolled right back, preparatory, apparently, to further activities in the same line.

‘The old lady must have been getting pretty handy with her little hatchet,' Wild remarked. ‘She would have had nothing but the four walls left, in time. Looks as if she meant to have a good go at the floor here.'

‘It's been swept carefully,' Bobby remarked. ‘Do you notice? From the door, right up to the gap in the floor where the boards have been pulled up, the carpet's been swept clean. I wonder what that was for?'

‘Something came over the poor old crazy soul and made her, I suppose,' Wild remarked.

They went into ether rooms on the same floor; and, in one at the back, noticed a kind of path, trodden quite plainly across the rotting, moth-eaten carpet to the window. It was an inch or two open, and from it they could see over that wilderness to which the garden had reverted in the course of forty years, so that the very paths were no longer distinguishable, where, on what once had been the lawn, weeds and grass grew knee-high, and even two or three self-sown hawthorns flourished bravely.

‘Look down there,' Wild said, and pointed to where, below the window, against the side of the house, was an enormous heap of wood-ash, some feet high and broad. ‘When she had to clear out her fire, she must have just brought the ash through here and tipped it out of the window. It's a wonder anything of the house is left at all.'

‘I expect very little wood would last her a long time,' Bobby remarked. ‘A chair a week, or something like that. I wonder how she got rid of her old tea-leaves, and so on – and the empty tins of condensed milk Humphreys says he supplies her with.'

‘The tea-leaves would go down the drain,' suggested Wild. ‘Most likely she dumped the old tins in the street.'

But, when they left that room and opened the door of the bathroom next to it, they found the tins there, hundreds of them, piled up till there seemed hardly room for any more.

‘Never seen anything like it before,' Wild murmured. ‘No, never. Lord, what a heap! What a life!'

‘I am wondering where she can be now?' Bobby said.

‘Gone away with some of the folk you saw here,' Wild answered promptly. ‘And what scared 'em so, and made 'em look the way you say they did, was just their knowing they had to do it – and no wonder, with all this the way it is.'

‘What about the revolver that last chap was carrying round with him, if it's like that?' Bobby asked. ‘And what about Con Conway's scare?'

‘Nothing to show,' Wild pointed out, ‘Con was ever here at all, or knew anything about the place. It may have been something somewhere else put the wind up him.'

‘Possible,' agreed Bobby. ‘But a bit of a coincidence, all the same; and I like my coincidences explained, when possible. We ought to get hold of him somehow, and ask him to explain,' said Bobby, with a gleam in his eye, for it was not only of possible explanations he was thinking, but also of a little chat about that now recovered silk umbrella.

They continued their search, and in the last room they entered they found, at last, signs of recent occupation. It was a small room, plainly intended to serve as dressing-room to a larger apartment from which it opened. It was the room, Bobby thought, of which on one occasion he had noticed the window open, and when he looked out he saw that a gutter-pipe ran close by, so that Con Conway, with his ape-like agility, would have found no difficulty in climbing up to it. If so, it might be that, after entering through the window – but why should he want to enter an old deserted place like this? – he had met with some terrifying experience. Or else, perhaps, while looking in he had seen something that had been enough to send him in terror-stricken flight – but, yet, what was it conceivable there could be here to throw him into such an intensity of fear? ?

To one side stood a small iron bedstead, whereon was heaped an untidy and unclean confusion of blankets and other coverings. Against the wall opposite the window was an enormous Saratoga trunk of a kind much in favour fifty years ago, when travellers voyaged more heavily burdened than now. In the corner next to it lay a small heap of clothing – a seal-skin coat, very old and worn bare, the fur, indeed, nearly completely worn away, a woman's dress of old-fashioned make, and also very worn, one or two other articles of attire, all very old and used, and including a pair of ancient buttoned boots so badly worn they were nearly falling apart as they lay.

‘Old things of hers she couldn't wear any longer and just flung 'em down there out of the way,' suggested Wild.

In the small fireplace were recent wood-ashes and an empty copper kettle, and in a corner near by was a heap of broken bits of wood. They seemed to have formed part of a chair, and evidently were intended for fuel. A few pieces of crockery, and some spoons, knives, and forks, were on a small table, and nearby was a battered old tin trunk that Wild reported, when he had looked inside, held an end of a loaf, very stale, a packet of tea, nearly finished, and a half-empty tin of condensed milk.

‘Gave up everything else, pretty nigh,' Wild remarked, ‘but not her tea – makes the old party more human like to think of her still enjoying her cup of tea, don't it?'

‘That can't be the loaf I saw Humphreys' man leaving,'

Bobby remarked, in a puzzled voice. ‘It's too stale, and she would hardly have got through the rest of it so quickly. That tin's been open some time, too – there was a new one with the fresh loaf he was bringing. What's become of it, and the loaf, too?'

‘Took 'em with her when she went – why not?' Wild answered. ‘No use leaving good food behind to waste.'

‘She seems to have left plenty behind,' Bobby remarked. ‘I wonder where she is – what can have become of her?'

‘In some asylum or home, or somewhere like that, where her friends have put her – and time, too,' Wild answered. ‘Look at this.'

He had picked up an old, high-heeled slipper that had been lying on the floor, near the door. Now yellow with age, it had evidently been white satin once. It seemed, however, to have escaped the moth and damp that had affected nearly all the other fabrics in the house, and indeed, everything else as well, and Bobby, turning it over in his hands, said:

‘Look how down the heel is – it must have been worn a good deal. It can't have been lying aside somewhere, never touched, like everything else here.'

‘No,' agreed Wild thoughtfully. ‘No. Looks as though it had been worn quite a lot – sort of seems to go with the wedding-cake downstairs, don't it? Part of the bridal dress, very like.'

‘If it is, I expect we shall find the rest somewhere about,' Bobby remarked.

‘Perhaps she kept all her finery, and put it on sometimes,' Wild suggested. ‘I've read something like that somewhere – about some man never turned up on his wedding-day, and, ever after, the girl would put on her wedding finery on the anniversary, once a year, on the same day, and sit and wait for him. Perhaps it was like that with her; and, if Con Conway did pay a visit here, that's what he saw and what scared him.'

‘I think there must have been more than that,' Bobby said slowly.

He had noticed a small box that looked like a jewel-case lying on the floor by the side of the big Saratoga trunk. He picked it up. It was empty, but also, quite plainly, it had recently been forced open. The broken lock and the lid smashed right across were evidently both injuries that had been inflicted only a short time ago. He handed it to Wild.

‘What do you make of that?' he asked.

Wild took it and examined it carefully, and began, now, to look more grave.

‘Opened forcibly, and not long ago,' he said. ‘Question is, was there anything in it, or was it empty?'

They stood for a moment or two, gravely considering the open case, and finding no answer to their question. Wild said:

‘That might account for Con Conway; jewellery's always his game.'

But Bobby shook his head.

‘I went through his pockets,' he said. ‘He had nothing on him. Besides, this looks as if it had been broken open quite recently, not so long ago as when I saw him, and then, too, if he had collected anything worth having, he wouldn't have been drawing attention to himself by running the way he was.'

‘My idea is,' persisted Wild, who, when he had an idea, did not give it up too easily, ‘when they came to take her off to the home or asylum where she is now, she told them about some bits of stuff she kept in this case. Wouldn't be worth much, most likely, but she wanted to take her bits of things with her. She hadn't got the key, though, and couldn't find it, so they just broke it open.'