Noonday and Night

‘He was sure there was nobody but the driver, and who else could have been in it? We were all turned out of it down in the town. Nobody stayed on it. Sometimes they do, at the coffee stops, but not this time.’

‘Did your husband speak to anybody else who had actually seen Mr Daigh?’

‘Oh, yes. He and Mr Mellick spoke to the man on the exit barrier. The car-park is sort of automatic, you see. You drive up and snatch a parking card from an automatic machine and the barrier lifts and lets you through. Then when you leave there’s a little sort of office and you hand in your card and the parking fee to the man and he pulls a lever that raises the barrier to let you out. It’s to prevent cars being stolen from the car-park, you see. You can’t take your car out without you can produce your card.’

‘It sounds an excellent system.’

‘Oh, we’ve had it for years in Poole, where I come from, only our car-park is multi- storey,’ said the witness complacently.

‘So, at Dantwylch, nobody in authority need be aware that a car or a coach has come in, but there is always a check on a vehicle going out?’

‘That’s right. The man on the barrier remembered our coach perfectly, and, near enough, the time.’

‘Oh, he noticed the time, did he?’

‘Eleven o’clock, give or take five minutes, he told my husband.’

‘Did he mention whether he recognised the driver?’

‘He didn’t say. Not that it would have done much good to ask, I don’t suppose. There’s a lot of shift-work, I dare say, in these car-parks, especially in holiday places. Long hours, you see. You couldn’t have one man on duty all the time. Like enough he wouldn’t have recognised Mr Daigh unless he’d just happened to be on duty the other times the coach parked there on the Pembroke tour.’

‘And there was no suggestion that more than one man was in the coach, I suppose?’

‘Nobody asked. Well, as I said, there couldn’t have been, could there? We all got off the coach at the bus stop where Mr Daigh set us down.’

‘He might have picked up somebody in the car-park, I suppose – somebody he knew and who had asked him for a lift.’

‘What! A lift into Swansea when we were due to be picked up in an hour’s time to go to lunch in Fishguard? Surely he wouldn’t have been so silly! Even if he was, well, I mean, why wasn’t he with the coach when the police found it? He was hijacked, that’s what my husband says.’

CHAPTER 5

The Bishop’s Palace

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Following almost but not quite the same procedure as in Derbyshire, this time Dame Beatrice took her secretary with her and left her chauffeur at home. Laura was a first-class driver and, in any case, was what she herself described as ‘mad to get in on the man-hunt’ which she regarded as more of a holiday spree than a serious quest.

They followed the route taken by Driver Daigh’s coach-party, but stayed only one night at Tenby following the night at Monmouth. Laura commented upon the Monnow bridge.

‘Pity there’s no access to the public,’ she said, eyeing the structure with its fort-like aspect. ‘If people are allowed up into the porter’s lodging over the Westgate at Winchester, I don’t see why we can’t be allowed the same sort of access to the lodging over the Monnow bridge.’

‘The pavement is narrow. There might be congestion and foot-passengers not wishing to visit the lodging might be forced into the road, don’t you think?’

‘Well, I find this a tantalising town,’ said Laura. ‘I got up early this morning and went to look at the castle where H. Five was born. There’s very little of it left, and what there is appears to be on land which belongs to the military.’

They lunched at the hotel and then, without stopping at Swansea, made for the hotel at Tenby where the coach-party had stayed for three nights. Enquiries there led to nothing and both the receptionist and the manager proved a trifle restive, already, they stated, having been questioned exhaustively by the police.

Dame Beatrice and Laura remained there for the night and early on the following morning they set out for Dantwylch and drove straight to the car-park. Here they met with the same kind of reception as they had experienced in Tenby. However, Dame Beatrice’s questions were answered civilly enough, although no fresh information was forthcoming and the man on duty at the exit could give no description of the County Motors driver.

‘So now back to Swansea, I suppose,’ said Laura, ‘although it seems a pity not to take a look at the Cathedral while we’re here.’

‘And the ruins of the bishop’s palace,’ agreed Dame Beatrice. ‘We have plenty of time before we go off for lunch.’

The Cathedral detained them for half an hour. Dame Beatrice purchased a handbook and studied it while she sat in a pew. Laura poked around and identified the various architectural periods beginning with the Norman mouldings of the nave arcade and ending with the modern statue of the patron saint with the Celtic dove of eloquence perched upon his shoulder.

When Laura had looked also at the fifteenth century misericords on the choir stalls, studied the shrine of the saint with its rearward holes for pilgrims’ offerings, seen the early fifteenth-century carvings which formed part of the canopy of the bishop’s stall, she and Dame Beatrice left the Cathedral, crossed the water, came to the gatehouse of the bishop’s palace, paid the entrance fee and passed into the courtyard.