Noonday and Night

you, then? And the ambulance waiting? Is lovely!’ He turned to Dame Beatrice. ‘Thorough we are, look you, in Dantwylch. Oh, yes, and now so clever you are, lady bach, something more I can tell you. We found out which man was on duty, see, when that coach left the car-park and was found at Swansea. Jones the Ticket told us he was surprised at the card the coach-driver handed in. ‘Why, man,’ he says, ‘you have only been here a matter of ten minutes.’ The driver says, ‘One of my passengers was taken bad, see? Got to get him to hospital.’ Then Jones the Ticket sees somebody stretched out on the floor of the coach and a waterproof spread over him and his face covered. Well, I now think it was not a sick man, but a dead man that Jones saw on the floor of the coach, and I think it was this dead man, look you.’

CHAPTER 8

The Hotel on Loch Linnhe

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But Scotland isn’t England,’ protested Basil Honfleur demonstrating yet again the English genius for understatement, ‘so I do wish you’d go up there, even now, and find out what’s happened to poor Knight.’

‘I can do nothing that the police cannot do much better, now that two bodies have been found.’

‘Oh, come, now, dash it! The police would never have found those two bodies if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘Laura, not I. But, even so, it was only a question of time. The police would have found them sooner or later.’

‘Anyway, this time we shall be quicker off the mark. Knight only disappeared four days ago. Surely the sooner we get on the trail the better?’

‘The same applies to the police and, unlike myself, they are on the trail already. The fact that now they know your drivers not only disappeared but have been murdered will add much more zest to their efforts than may have been their initial urge when they thought that they were chasing merely a couple of runaways. They really have something to go on this time. By the way, was Knight your regular driver on that tour?’

‘No. He offered to do a stint to help us out and that was the tour without a driver.’

‘I see.’

‘You mean you won’t go up there, then, and look into things for yourself and on our behalf?’

‘For myself, well, yes. Curiosity, apart from my dislike of murder, will impel me to continue my investigations.’

‘My Company will be glad to…’

‘I am not interested in rewards and I do not believe in fairies.’

‘But we’d like to express…’

‘Look, my dear Mr Honfleur, does not one thing strike you very forcibly?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘If you have not guessed my meaning it will be kinder if I do not expound it.’

Basil Honfleur got up from his chair and walked to the window of this office. The view was pleasant. The window did not overlook the busy bus station but gave a prospect of the municipal park. There were lawns, trees and flower-beds and among these meandered a tiny stream. Broad paths were thronged with holiday crowds, but their laughter and conversation scarcely penetrated to the room, which was high up in the building. Faintly, also, like the dying fall referred to by Shakespeare, came the far-off music played by the municipal orchestra, for the bandstand was opposite the window from which Honfleur surveyed the scene.

He remained where he was for a minute or two and then turned to Dame Beatrice.

‘I won’t pretend I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘You mean this dreadful business is something to do with our organisation, don’t you?’

‘I think that, somewhere among your members, you have what my secretary would call a bent operator.’

‘Yes,’ said Honfleur gloomily, ‘I know all the evidence suggests that, particularly the hijacking of the coach in Wales and the planting of it in Swansea. But it doesn’t follow, you know. Our chaps are by no means the only people who can handle a coach. Take that tank chap at Hulliwell, for example. If he could take that coach-load back to their hotel without any trouble, so could hundreds of others.’

‘That is true. Where is the passenger list for this tour conducted by Knight?’

‘As we live there, we picked up the coach in Canonbury,’ said Mrs Grant. ‘I travelled with my neighbour, Mrs Kingsbury, while our husbands went fishing. I did a coach tour with Ian last year. I liked it, but he was less keen. Anyway, we agreed that it wasn’t a bad idea to have separate holidays for a change, so he fixed up with Edward Kingsbury while I went off with Susan. We took a room with twin beds because we thought you got a better room that way, and we know each other quite well, so neither of us minded sharing and it’s more companionable, too.

‘We stayed the first night in Harrogate and went on to Edinburgh. We had thought of going out after dinner, but it rained. It was still raining when we left at nine on the following morning – Monday, that would have been – but the rain cleared away before lunch, so we had a really enjoyable run, although it was too misty to see much at first.

‘We crossed the Forth Bridge and had a rather poor coffee-stop, I thought. It was only so that people could use the loo, of course. I don’t think anybody bothered with coffee; it wasn’t that sort of place. But the lunch stop was delightful, right at the end of Loch Earn, and we had enough time to walk around a little, when the meal was over, and look at the view. The driver came with Susan and me and told us the names of the mountains, but, of course, I don’t remember what they were.’

The driver? Mr Knight?’