Noonday and Night

it were.’

‘Could you not use Signor Vittorio?’ asked Dame Beatrice flippantly. ‘He can drive a car.’

‘Oh, I passed up on Vittorio months ago. I began to wonder what he was up to and how he got hold of some of the bits he tried to flog to me. Then, when you tipped me off about that Chinese stuff which he had shown Miss Mendel and had tried to sell me, I thought it was high time to sever the connection. I was tactful, of course. Told him that now the Welsh dresser, which I’d found for myself, was completely stocked, I’d lost interest and was thinking of going over to France and handling the Continental side of our business myself and expanding it. I have turned that idea over in my mind, as a matter of fact. There might be big opportunties if we could run our Continental tours from over there instead of from here. We might do Greece and Turkey, as well as the south of Italy, none of which we touch at present.’

‘I see. And how did Vittorio receive this information?’

‘Shrugged his shoulders, wished me luck and said that he had much enjoyed our acquaintanceship. Whether he put two and two together and realised that I thought some of his acquisitions might come from rather dubious sources, of course I don’t know, but we parted amicably enough. I hope he did take the hint. He did his best to find me the things I wanted, and he was an amusing sort of chap in his way.’

‘ “The Smiler With the Knife,” ’ quoted Dame Beatrice absently. Honfleur looked startled.

‘You don’t mean that?’ he cried.

‘Mean what? Oh, good gracious me! Does one ever learn to cope with the subconscious mind when, occasionally, it chooses to rear its ugly head?’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said Honfleur, relieved. ‘I knew you must be joking.’

Dame Beatrice did not reply to this. She changed the subject to her proposed journey into Wales, but later, to Laura, she said, ‘There’s many a true word spoken in jest, and this would fit. How beautifully, how logically, how perhaps all too easily it would fit! But it is useless and wrong to jump to conclusions at this stage of the enquiry. I must keep an open mind.’

For some reason, perhaps again there was more prompting from the subconscious, Dame Beatrice found that she was not particularly surprised by the next development. She had made all her preparations for departure, and Laura was actually seated at the wheel of the car, when Honfleur’s call came through. A third coach-driver had disappeared, this time on the tour to West Scotland and Skye.

‘Can you possibly call and see me?’ asked the worried man.

‘I am about to depart for Wales, but I could break my journey,’ she replied.

‘I do so wish you would. At my office, not my house, if you don’t object. I’ve got to be here now this wretched news has come in. I only heard it half an hour ago and I’m nearly out of my mind. There won’t be a man willing to take a coach anywhere after this! Thank goodness we’re getting near the end of the season!’

‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, when she met him, ‘this is a pretty state of affairs, is it not? And there is disaffection among your men?’

‘Not yet, but there will be when they know about this third disappearance. At the moment every coach is on the road. We go out on Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays, you see, so at mid-week every driver is taking out a tour. The nine-day trips go on Saturdays and the six-day and seven-day on Mondays or Sundays. The idea is that, whichever tour is taken, the passengers are never back later than the following Sunday evening, so that they can get to work, if necessary, on the Monday morning after their tour ends. Some companies do ten- to fourteen-day tours, but we don’t, except on the Continent. That’s one reason why I’d like to get out there. If we could shorten up a twelve- or thirteen-day tour to nine days, we could run more often and also I believe we’d get extra bookings. At present our Continental coaches are rarely fully booked, and that’s uneconomic.’

He appeared to be about to expand on the subject, but Dame Beatrice checked the flow with a direct question.

‘So when I have been to Wales, would you like me to visit Scotland?’

‘Why not leave Wales to the police and go straight to Fort William? The trail up there will still be hot.’

‘Are you more concerned about this man than about the second driver?’

‘No, no, of course not, but I suppose I’ve got a special feeling for him. I was entirely responsible for getting him a job here. He wasn’t seconded to us from the buses, as most of our fellows are, but he was down on his luck after the war and came and asked me if I’d got anything for him. He’d been a van driver, but got into trouble for stealing cigarettes. The company didn’t press charges, but they sacked him. He asked me to give him a chance. I was dubious, needless to say, but he was frank with me about his record and I knew it was his first lapse, and I took a bet with myself that it would be his last. I knew the man, you see, because he had been in my unit during the war. He was a first-class soldier. Didn’t mind what risks he ran. Brave as a lion. He said he’d yielded to a sudden temptation and I believed him.’

‘I see.’

‘And now this has to happen to him!’

‘You must be an extremely worried man.’

‘Honestly, Dame Beatrice, this third disappearance has knocked me endwise. One thing: the police really will have to charge into the matter bald-headed now.’

‘The police are doing that already, since they know a driver has been murdered. What happened, so far as you have been told, in the case of this third driver? Did he also disappear on a day’s outing after the passengers had left the coach to go sightseeing?’

‘No. He does appear to have vanished from the hotel itself. It’s in a fairly remote sort of spot right down on the shore of the loch with nothing but a narrow road between it and the water. The coach did the Skye trip and Knight, the driver, had dinner with the passengers, but in the morning there was the coach still parked at the back of the hotel, but with no sign of the driver. The passengers’ baggage was neatly stacked in the hotel vestibule, where the hotel porters had put it, but the driver’s bed was untouched and the passengers have not seen him again.’

‘So what steps were taken?’