to drink at the bar?’ she asked.
‘Carstairs? I wouldn’t know him,’ the manager replied.
‘Did Driver Knight always bring the County Motors coach here?’
‘Only once before, I believe. Two men called Ford and Dibbens alternated with the tour.’
‘Will you describe Knight as closely as ever you can? It may be vitally important.’
CHAPTER 10
The Bungalow
« ^ »
Describe him?’ The manager looked dubious. ‘My dining-room staff would be better at that than I would. We get coaches all the time during the summer and unless the drivers have any complaints, which is very seldom indeed at my hotel, I don’t really see anything of them. They’re civil, unobtrusive lads as a rule and they don’t bring themselves much to my notice. Why not have a wee word with my head waiter?’
The head waiter was Swiss. Like most of his calling, he had a good command of English and he readily consented to describe Knight.
‘This driver was taller than myself. I am metres one point seven. I think maybe he would be seven centimetres taller.’
‘Two and a half to three inches taller than yourself, and you measure roughly five feet seven. I see. What kind of build has he?’
‘Build? His body? Not fat.’
‘Noticeably broad-shouldered, powerful?’
‘Oh, no, not that; just ordinary. He had brown hair, a little grey on the temples and cut short, not the modern fashion.’
‘Was he clean-shaven?’
‘Oh, yes, there was no moustache or beard.’
‘What kind of man was he?’
‘Jocund, always with a smile.’
‘Did you like him?’
The Swiss shrugged his shoulders.
‘What does your Shakespeare say?’ he asked rhetorically. Dame Beatrice cackled.
‘
The head waiter merely shrugged his expressive shoulders again.
‘He had been here only once before,’ he said, as though this unhelpful remark was an answer to her question.
‘He was in your dining room on the first night the party stayed here?’
‘Making himself very agreeable to the ladies, yes.’
‘And you saw him at dinner the evening the party returned from Skye?’
‘Certainly I did. The people at his table invited him to a glass of wine and I myself took their order, so I know he was there.’
‘He did not take coffee in the lounge that evening, I am told.’
‘I do not know about that. He had to look over the coach, perhaps.’
‘Would anybody on the staff know whether he took the coach out after dinner, I wonder?’
The head waiter did not know, but he thought not. However, he went off to make enquiries and returned shortly to say that nobody believed that the coach had been moved that night.
‘Nothing to show that it couldn’t have been moved after dark, though, and brought back before morning,’ said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone. ‘I mean,
‘Your cryptic reference eludes me.’
‘The Border ballad, you know:
The deepest pot in Clyde Water
They got Young Hunting in,
With a green turf tied across his breast
To keep that good lord down.
‘That’s all I meant. I don’t suppose it would be past somebody’s ingenuity to stab the man the way Noone and
