“The Anderley Affair”

Taranaki Daily News, 11 April 1930, Page 14

“The Anderley Affair”

By

JOHN LAURENCE

"T shall do the same thing,” said Floyd, as she brushed her hair, “Not just because I want company, but because I want to find out things, and servants tell more than Arnheim will. That man was probably one of the servants spying on Arnheim. And I must find out which and why. I’ll see the housekecped.” “Of course you can have your meals with someone,” said the housekeeper when Floyd had explained that she did not want to seem aloof. “Your cousin used to go down with the servants sometimes, but I don’t think that was a very dignified thing for Mr. Arnheim’s secretary to do, do you? He didn’t seem to object though I spoke to him about it. I should be delighted if you would have your meals with me. I always have mine alone.”

Floyd found the housekeeper, Mrs. Sanders, to be unexpectedly pleasant and talkative,, and : during breakfast Floyd was saying much more than she had ever expected to say in that house. Daringly she broached the subject to the murder of Oakes. • .

.“Didn’t you find it unpleasant being so near the centre of publicity?” she asked. “Those reporters ask questions of everybody.” . “They didn't come here after the first one, replied Mrs. Sanders with a laugh. “Mr. Arnheim has a couple of bloodhounds. They’re gentle enough really, but they look fierce enough to eat a reporter on> sight. The first reporter' who came wanted to lookVover the wall 'between us and next door to see if he could find any traces of Sir Henry getting over. Mr. Arnheim told him to try if he liked, but he came back faster than he went out. Since then we’ve hot been worried by them.” ,

“But the police have been here I suppose?” asked Floyd. “Oh yes,.Mr. Arnheim showed^them all along the wall and the grounds himself, but I don’t think they found much. If they did they didn’t say anything about it. I don’t see myself why they should think the murderer did come this way. It’s more likely he went out over the back wall or through the door.” “Are the bloodhounds loose at night?” asked Floyd. “I went out for a stroll last evening, and—”

She broke off expressively and gave a shudder. The housekeeper smiled. . “Not in the front part of the house, my dear,” she answered. “There’s a walled garden at the back. I daresay you have seen it from your bedroom window. They’re allowed the run of it at night. If anybody did try to burgle the house they’d be sure to come that way and we should hear the dogs.” “That settles throwing a note over the wall,” reflected Floyd, and added aloud, “My cousin told me Mr. Arnheim hasn’t been hero very long.” “About a year. I’ve been with him ten months,” replied the housekeeper. “Yousll find him alright to work for, if you don’t show too much curiosity.” Floyd pricked up her ears. “Ho is very quiet, I mean in the waj he walks about,” she confided, and told the other of the way Arnheim had surprised her in her room. “That’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Sanders. “1 generally make a round of the rooms each day to seo whether the vants. have done their work. The room opposite this one he calls the board room. It’s Where he and his business friends talk. I was in there last week before it had been cleaned. You never, saw such, a mess as men make when they get together, cigar and cigarette ash* all over th© place and bits of paper everywhere. There was a paper on the floor under one of the chairs. It looked like a part of a map,with red lines on i| and I was •just looking at it. when Mr. Arnheim snatched it out of my hand. I think I screamed I was so frightened. I have never seen him so angry, and he threatened that the next time he caught mo reading things tha,t didn’t belong to me, he would get rid of me. It was a long time before I could even tell him I had only just picked it up, and hadn’t had a chance to read it.”

It was a map ?” asked Floyd eagerly “Well, it looked like, a map. But ho had snatched it before I had a good chance to look at it. I thought it was rubbish; in fact, at first. He gave orders after that, that the room was never to be entered any day till he had seen it. In fact he locks the door. after their meetings. Anybody would think he had got something to hide.” “He made me feel as though I had met a ghost suddenly,” said Floyd, who had no doubt that the map Mrs. Sanders had seen was part of the very map of Yandan f° r w bich Chalmers was searching. “Are you afraid of ghosts’? asked |Mrs. Sanders quietly. • “Not really, in fact, I don’t believe in them at all.”

“I wish sometimes that I didn’t,” said the housekeeper, pouring herself out another cup of tea. Floyd noticed that her hands were far from steady. But surely you don’t really beliece in them, Mrs. Sanders?”

“Seeing is believin-g.” “You’ve seen a ghost?” cried Floyd. “But how thrilling; I wish I could see one.”

. “Maybe you will if you stay here for long,” continued the housekeeper. “But there, I ought not to be frightening you.” A ghost in this house? It will take inore than a ghost to frighten me.” One of the servants saw it first,” added her companion. “The day after the murder.. She thought it was the murdered man’s ghost and screamed the place down. It was the first time I ever saw Mr. Arnheim really upset, and he’d got a. number of his friends with him that night, which made it worse.” “Where did she see it, what was it like ?” asked Floyd eagerly.

She had a healthy mind and had the slightest belief in ghosts. If the servant had seen anything Floyd was sure it wasn t a ghost, but something far more .tangible, some real person. She had a shrewd suspicion in her mind who it was the servant had seen, and the housekeeper’s next words confirmed it. “She was coming down the stairs when she saw it ouside the boardroom bending down half in the shadow—a black ghost.”

“A black ghost,” echoed Floyd. “How could she have seen a black ghost.” “Well, she did It was a man all in black. She saw him look up at her and then he vanished and she screamed.” “And then?”

“Mr. Arnheim camo running out with his friends. They found Annie* on the floor in a fit of hysterics'and jt was half an hour before they'got'any sense out of her. Mr. Arnhenh sdemcd to take it seriously because li6‘ bad aft'the servants

up and made them search the house from top to bottom. Next day Annie gave notice, and I didn’t blame her.”

“But you’ve seen it, Mrs. Sanders?” “I saw 7 it two nights after, but I didn’t tell anybody,” said the housekeeper. “I was just going up the stairs and I saw it at the top, and it vanished just as Annie had said it did. One moment it was there and the next it had gone. I waited till one of the men-servants camo along before I dared go up.” “If I see it I am going to find out what it is,” said Floyd decisively. “I don’t believe it was a ghost. I believe it was somebody playing a trick.”

Mrs. Sanders shook her head vigorously in disagreement. “A man in black,” he echoed, hoarsely. “A man in black, do yon know what you are saying?” He was shaking in his agitation, and his face had gone ashen. “Why, have you seen it too, Mr. Arnheim?” asked Floyd as he released her arm and stepped back. “I thought afterwards it was imagination on my part, a shadow thrown by the candle. Is it a real ghost? I thought ghosts were white.”

“Don’t think next time,” snapped Arnheim. “Shout, scream, do anything to draw attention. Act. That man’s out to kill.”

“Kill, Mr. Arnheim. Oh, you’ve frightened mo more than ever!” Floyd threw just tho right inflection of fear into her voice. “I—l don’t think I can stay” With an obvious effort the other pulled himself 'together. “Of course I was talking nonsense,” he said. “One of the servants saw him and had a fit of hysterics. She kept on shouting that he was going to kill her, and I suppose the phrase stuck in my mind. I believe it’s some foolish trick of one of the servants. Good mind to sack the lot.” •

“I’m not really afraid of ghosts, Mr. Arnheim,” said Floyd putting down her note book on a small table by the door. “So do you really want me to scream if I 6co it again?” Arnheim nodded sharply.

“The sooner I find out Who it is the better, and I’ll make an example of him,” he cried angrily.

He turned and walked towards his desk, and Floyd went out of the room. “Now I wonder why you’re so frightened,” she whispered to herself, “and I shouldn’t think you’re so easily scared, Mr. Arnheim.”

She walked into her room, stood there for exactly a minute by her watch, and then turned.

“Time I got my notebook. Silly of me to put it down like that and forget it,” she said with a laugh. “I really believe, Floyd Anderley, you will make a lady detective yet. You ought to be frightened out of your life; but somehow you’re not. It’s not bad fun after all. Better than waiting doing nothing. I really think the other side’s ■ more frightened than I am.” She knocked quietly at Arnheim’s door, very quietly, for she did not want him to hear her, and she opened the door as quietly and walked quickly into the room. She heard the words, “Is that you Marley? Come along fast—” when he saw her.

“What the devil do you mean by coming in without knocking?” lie blazed. “I did knock. I’m sorry. I forgot my notebook.” Floyd picked up her bpok.and fled. She had learnt all she wanted to know. The man in black had so frightened Arnheim that the latter had wasted no time in getting in touch with Marley, the man who had made Lena Oakes leave the house.

“If he . frightens me,” said. Floyd, setting her teeth, “then my name is not Floyd Anderley. It will be Mabel Trenchard of course.”

From out of her window, as she sat typing the letters Arnheim had given her,' she could see part of the drive leading up to tho house, and but ten minutes after Arnheim had been on the telephone she saw<Marley coming up it, walking quickly. She recognised him without any difficulty from the photograph 'Chalmers had shown her.

“So he doesn’t live far away,” reflected Floyd. “Now what excuse can I make to get into that room again and have a closer look at his lordship’s face?” She had no reason to make any exMarley had not been with minutes before the bell rang for her. '

“This is Miss Trenchard, Marley,” introduced Arnheim one-sidedly. “I. want you to tell Mr. Marley what happened last night.”

Floyd looked at Marley and studied him with curiosity as she outlined her story. He was tanned by the sun and at first glance was the type of man who is very attractive-to women. But his eyes were a little too small and a little too closely set, his cheeks were inclined to be pufi’y, and the thin line of his lips suggested a 'streak of cruelty in his nature. Most of the time she was speaking he was looking, her up and down in a gross kind of way which made' her boil inwardly. “Said anything to the rest of the servants?” he asked when she had finished. “No,” replied Floyd, biting her lips to keep back the retort that she wasn’t a servant. “I told the housekeeper, Airs. Sanders, at breakfast, because she told me she had seen it top. But she hasn’t told anybody else.” “It’s one of the servants playing a trick,” put in Arnheim. “One of the servants, nothing,” said Marley sharply. /‘They haven’t got the brains to do it for one thing, and for another, what’s' the object of creeping about like that? They can walk about the house where they like, can’t they? If you ask me, the sooner you search the house again the better, or shift out yourself. I don’t like it. What was he, fat oi’ thin, tall or short or what?” he added turning round to Floyd. She shook her head. “I was too frightened to notice anything about him,” she explained. “If I’d been there he would have got a bullet in him,” said Marley viciously. “Next time you see him scream for help.” “A ou liad better get on with the letters,” said Arnheim, “and don't say anything more about it. I still think it's some foolish trick” “Nevertheless they are both of them frightened half out of their lives for some reason or other,” said Floyd to herself as she closed the, door behind her. “I think’ I’d rather be in my shoes than theirs.” (To be Continued.)