‘No. In the Derbyshire affair the driver disappeared at mid-day while his passengers were inspecting a stately home.’
‘I don’t see that it makes any difference.’
‘And his coach had been moved a few yards from the spot on which he left it. Of course, it may have been moved merely to accommodate another vehicle. I wonder whether your coach had been moved during the night?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Perhaps the people at the hotel can tell me.’
‘Oh, are you going up there?’
‘As I am being retained by the Company to watch their interests, I think I should see the conditions for myself. By the way, Mrs Grant, did Driver Knight make any mention of the fact that he had returned recently from sick leave?’
‘Not so far as I know. He must have made a good recovery. I never saw a healthier-looking man.’
The hamlet – although it was scarcely large enough to merit even that description – was called Saighdearan. Apart from the hotel, it consisted of an ugly, raw-looking motel a couple of hundred yards further along the road to Fort William, a lorry-drivers cafe and half-a-dozen cottages put up by a speculative builder for holiday letting. There were also a couple of owner-occupied bungalows on a slope above the hotel and there was a large house further along the loch-side, but it had fallen into ruins and was unoccupied.
A busy road ran between the hotel and the steep-sided banks of the loch. There was a grey, stony shore, muddy and uninviting, but on the further side the mountains were reflected in the water and the reflections were calm, clear and beautiful.
Laura had booked in by telephone and as soon as they had tidied up after the drive from Carlisle, where they had spent the night, Dame Beatrice made no secret of her errand to the hotel manager, a massive, bearded man wearing a tweed jacket and a beautiful kilt in the tartan of MacDonald of Clanranald.
‘That?’ he said. ‘Yes, a very strange business, to be sure. So you are here on behalf of County Tours, whose driver he was. Well, there’s little I can tell you. The police have all the information I can give.’
‘I am wondering whether you have any theories which perhaps you have not imparted to the police.’
‘No, no, I am not one to indulge in speculation. From what I heard, this is not the first case of its kind.’
‘That is what makes it so serious.’
‘Aye, right enough. Well, I’ll recapitulate for your benefit, but there’s nothing I can tell you that you will not know already.’
He proceeded to give an account which tallied in all respects with that which she had had already from Mrs Grant, except that the missing man’s suitcase, neatly packed, was still in the hotel.
‘I suppose Knight did not have any visitors from outside while the party was here?’ she asked. ‘I note that your lounge bar and your dining-room are open to non-residents.’
‘He had no visitors. The coach arrived on the first evening at six, dinner was at seven and he sat at table with three of the passengers. On the following morning the coach left at nine to go over to Skye and he dined that night with some of the other passengers. I always take a look round the dining-room to make sure all is well and everybody is happy, so I am sure he was there. He appeared to be making himself very agreeable to the ladies, as was his custom.’
‘And that, I assume, is the last you saw of him. I understand he did not take coffee that evening.’
‘Aye, that’s true.’
‘You did not see him go to his room?’
‘Nobody saw him. He would likely have taken the covered way from the dining-room without going through the lounge.’
‘I suppose you did not hear a car come into your front parking-space that night? The space you keep for casual visitors?’
‘There would be cars coming and going up to the end of the licensing hours, of course, and, far into the night, there would be cars going by on the road.’
‘Oh, of course. How many exits are there to the hotel?’
‘There will be four, including the one from the hotel shop. There is another at the hotel entrance by the reception desk, another opposite the shop on the corridor which leads to the ground-floor bedrooms, and one more at the foot of the stairs up to the three-storey wing where Knight had his room. He could have slipped away easily enough without anybody being the wiser, so long as he bided his time and watched that nobody was about, but why should he want to slip away? He wasn’t owing me money.’
‘So there doesn’t seem to be a lead anywhere,’ said Laura, when they were discussing the affair in Dame Beatrice’s room after dinner that evening. ‘What’s the next move? Do we look for another dead body, do you suppose? I’m getting morbid about this business.’
‘The manager has consented to my questioning the hotel staff, although he assures me – and I have a feeling he is right – that they can tell me nothing which they have not already told the police.’
‘Is it worth while to bother them, then?’
‘I think, for my own satisfaction, it must be done.’
‘I could do a bit of rubber-necking round the village, if that would be of any help. You’d have to tell me what you want me to say, though.’
‘ “That shall be tomorrow, not tonight.” ’
