Noonday and Night

Mrs Wade was a cheerful, plump, pretty woman in her mid-thirties, accustomed, because of her job, to answering questions and retaining a helpful demeanour. Such evidence as she could offer was independently reinforced by Miss Morley at a separate interview which took place just outside the booking hall.

‘Cyril Noone was a quiet fellow. Not much to say for himself, but would do anything for anybody.’

‘Including, perhaps, giving a stranger a lift in his coach when his passengers were out of it?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

‘Oh, not casual strangers, of course. But if there was another coach-driver in trouble, especially one of our lot or even a man working for another tour company, Cyril would do his best to help him out, I’m sure, provided it didn’t hold up the tour at all.’

‘What about Mr Daigh?’

‘Well, he was a different sort. Fond of his joke, but never nasty or embarrassing with it. Quite the gentleman in that sort of way, but – well, you know – liked his bit of fun.’

‘Gentlemanly enough to take a sick person to hospital, for example? Someone who was not on the tour, I mean.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t quite say that. The coaches are on a very tight schedule, you see. There wouldn’t be time for a driver to go off like that, although I’d say that, in the ordinary way, I’m sure Jack Daigh would do a good turn if he died for it.’

‘Which he may well have done,’ said Dame Beatrice, when she recounted to Laura the information she had received from the desk-clerks.

‘So what will you do now?’ asked Laura.

‘I shall return to Derbyshire and talk to the County police. I have no doubt that they will have searched the moors. The search must be unsuccessful, or we should have heard. I shall suggest a different hiding-place for poor Noone’s body. If my suggestion is well received and their search of my rather unlikely hiding-place is successful, then I shall convey the same suggestion to the police who are conducting the search for Daigh in Wales.’

‘But what is this long shot of yours?’

‘I prefer not to say until I know whether or not it has reached its target.’

‘And you do really think that these missing drivers have been murdered? But why?’

‘Why do I think so? – or why have they been murdered?’

‘Both, I suppose.’

‘I think so because you think so. Isn’t that right?’

‘Perhaps it is. It’s the fact that two are missing which bothers me.’

‘As for why they have been murdered, well, the temporary theft of the Welsh coach – if a theft can be held to be temporary – indicated a robbery of a more serious kind, I think.’

‘You mean our coach was commandeered to convey stolen goods?’ asked Honfleur incredulously when she made the suggestion to him.

‘It is a reasonable supposition, I think. I wonder why you think so?’

‘Oh, I don’t! I think you’re jumping to conclusions far too readily. What kind of stolen goods would need a coach to transport them?’

‘Thousands of cigarettes, cases of contraband liquor, a fortune in narcotics wrapped up in bales of textiles… or even an innocent-seeming suitcase.’

‘Oh, all right! But we’ve no details of such stolen cargoes, have we?’

‘We have not, but what about the police?’

‘The police? Well, so far as we are concerned, all they know at present is that two of our drivers are missing. That’s all I care about. In any case, your theories of theft and murder still have to be proved. How do you propose to set about it? Have you really any ideas?’

‘I shall go back to Derbyshire and talk with the Chief Constable of the district in which Driver Noone disappeared. If he will agree to do as I ask, one of my theories – well, not theories so much as wild guesses, I fear – will either be proved or disproved. If I am right, and we find Noone, then I know where to find Daigh.’

‘And it’s of no use to ask you any more questions?’

‘At present, no. I am probably going on a wild-goose chase and a ridiculous one at that, and if it weren’t for Laura I should not be undertaking it at all.’

‘I suggested it?’ exclaimed Laura.

‘No. You simply and quite unintentionally put a grotesque thought into my head.’

CHAPTER 6

Devil-Porter It No Further

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The Chief Constable of the district in which Hulliwell Hall was situated looked dubious.

‘But what makes you think so?’ he asked. ‘A body on a gatehouse roof? It seems such a fantastic idea.’

‘In Monmouth my secretary remarked on the fact that there appears to be no admission to the watchman’s lodging which forms part of the fourteenth century Monnow bridge.’