‘Yes. Such a helpful man and so knowledgeable. There wasn’t a question he couldn’t answer, although he said he had done the tour only once before.’
‘So you had no suspicions?’
‘Suspicions of what?’
‘That he might have had something on his mind, perhaps.’
‘Good heavens, no, except that I suppose the drivers must always have something on their minds. It must be a big responsibility to have thirty people depending on you for nine whole days and all that driving to do. He was always most jovial, though. When we got back on to the coach after the next stop, which was for tea after we’d been through Glen Coe, he said, “You think you’re going to Fort William, don’t you? Well, you’re not.” I remember I felt very disappointed. I wondered whether that meant we were not going to Skye, either, because, of course, they reserve the right to change the route, but, as it turned out, all was well. We stayed at a new hotel, most of it built bungalow-fashion with one three-storey wing, and, I must say, it was excellent. It was about five miles south of Fort William and —’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Dame Beatrice, who did not want to waste time in listening to a description of a hotel which she herself proposed to visit in the near future, ‘and it was from that hotel that Knight disappeared.’
‘He sat at dinner the first night with Susan and me and a man who had come on his own, and Knight was as cheerful and talkative as ever. After dinner Susan and I went for a stroll. The hotel was on the shores of Loch Linnhe and it was a lovely evening. There were mountains on the other side of the loch and the water was calm and lovely. If Ian had been there instead of Susan it would have been like our honeymoon. (We spent it in the Highlands.) When we got back, the woman who sat behind us in the coach was reading people’s palms and there was a big group round her, of course, and a lot of laughing and exclamations. The tour had certainly got into its stride and everybody seemed relaxed and happy, especially Mr Knight. I suppose it’s a relief to know a tour is going well.’
‘And on the following day you went to Skye.’
‘Yes, but the best part of the drive was from Fort William to Kyle of Lochalsh.
‘And after you got back from Skye?’
‘I think most people turned in fairly early. I wrote some postcards and then Susan and I went to bed. We talked about the views of Ben Nevis we had seen on the way back.’
‘Did you see any more of the driver after he had brought the party back from Skye?’
‘Oh, yes. Somebody bought him a drink at the bar and he was at dinner – not with us, of course, this time. He had to go the rounds. After dinner he was not in the lounge for coffee and I concluded he was checking the coach against the next day’s run.’
‘And you never saw him again?’
‘No. He wasn’t at breakfast, but nobody thought anything about that, because we concluded he’d had his early so as to get all our suitcases on board ready for the nine o’clock start, but when we came out from breakfast and Susan had been back to our room to make sure the suitcases had been collected from outside the bedroom door and that we’d left nothing behind, we went to the hotel reception to hand in our key and there was all the luggage still stacked in the vestibule and no sign of Knight or the coach. One of the porters was asking whether anyone had seen him, but, of course, nobody had.’
‘But the coach was still there? He had not gone off in it?’
‘Oh, no, it was where, I suppose, he had parked it overnight behind the hotel. Well, we hung about and hung about. Some sat in the lounge, others looked at the things in the hotel shop, then the newspapers came in, so that helped a bit. I spoke to the manager, but he couldn’t tell us a thing except that Mr Knight must have thumbed a lift into Fort William to buy something and hadn’t been able to get a lift back.’
‘Was Knight’s room searched?’
‘Oh, yes, when he didn’t turn up, and that was the queerest thing of all. One or two of our men went along with the chambermaid to find out whether he’d been taken ill, but the room was empty and his bed was untouched.’
‘What about his suitcase?’
‘His suitcase? I’ve no idea. Nobody mentioned that, and it didn’t occur to me to ask. Well, in the end, another driver turned up – I suppose the hotel manager telephoned for him. He came from Edinburgh. We were taken to Perth, which was our next overnight stop, but there was no coffee-break and a very late lunch that day, and everybody was wondering what had happened to Mr Knight. There were some nasty rumours because, of course, most people had read about the other driver.’
Dame Beatrice did not mention that the last word could now be put in the plural. All she said was:
‘And that was the end of the matter, so far as you were concerned?’
‘Well, yes. I mean, there was nothing we could do, was there? We got home all right, because they sent another driver up from County Coaches for us, but it wasn’t the same happy party. The driver was a very taciturn man and, anyway, losing Mr Knight like that quite spoilt the holiday, although, of course, it did give us something to talk about for the rest of the trip.’
‘Oh, yes? What sort of things were mentioned?’
‘Well, as I said, people remembered that, about a month before, another driver had disappeared and had been found murdered in Derbyshire. I knew nothing about that at the time, because Ian and I had been visiting our married daughter in Spain, where she and her husband had rented a flat for a month, and we didn’t get the English papers there, but there was a lot of talk after we got back, apart from all the gossip on the coach.’
‘I see.’ Dame Beatrice still did not reveal that another driver had been found murdered, this time in Wales, for that bit of news had not leaked to the press and so was not public property. ‘The two cases are not analogous, though.’
‘Not?’
