Noonday and Night

‘Quite impossible. I knew them both. They are not in the least alike,’ said Honfleur. ‘Whatever made you think of that?’

‘It was a wild suggestion,’ said Laura.

‘At any rate, Knight has disappeared,’ said Honfleur.

‘Yes, he certainly has,’ agreed Laura. ‘By the way, supposing he turned up again safe and well, would your drivers resume work? That’s one of the things I was sent to ask you.’

‘But neither you nor Dame Beatrice knew that my drivers were on strike until you came here today.’

Laura wagged her head.

‘We didn’t know,’ she admitted, ‘but Dame B gave me to understand that it was a fair assumption and, as usual, she turns out to have been right.’

‘Well, I hope she’s right about Knight, too, and that he’ll turn up,’ said Honfleur, beginning to fidget with a pencil.

‘You want to be busy, I know,’ said Laura, ‘so I won’t keep you any longer. It was a long shot about Conradda, but Dame B thought there was just the chance that you might be in touch with her.’

‘Sorry, no.’

Laura took her leave, remarking, as Honfleur opened his office door for her:

‘Best of luck in getting your men back to work.’

‘I may succeed, if Knight is alive and you can find him for me.’

Laura returned to the Stone House to find Dame Beatrice watched over by a private detective, a retired police- sergeant, whom Laura’s husband, in response to an urgent call from his wife, had sent along. Dame Beatrice gravely introduced him to Laura and he retired to the kitchen, leaving them together.

‘What news from the Slough of Despond?’ she enquired.

‘It’s that, all right,’ said Laura. ‘His drivers are going on strike. Could his job be in danger if they do? Apart from that, he knows nothing about Conradda, but Vittorio’s death has knocked him all of a heap. He seems to be a very worried man.’

‘The loss of three drivers and an impending strike would be quite enough to account for that.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘There is another factor, too, which may be causing him uneasiness. I have been in touch with one of his directors. It appears that a big merger is on the way. There are four coach-tour companies in the area, one of which is an off-shoot of a very much larger concern based on a Midlands network. It seems that agreement has been reached and that this mammoth concern will take over County Motors after the end of next season.’

‘So Honfleur could be made redundant, you think?’

‘It is more than possible. These mergers do not tend to improve every employee’s position and prospects. Mr Tedworthy, who gave me help over the affair at Hulliwell Hall, is a case in point.’

‘I wonder how long Honfleur has known about the merger? He’s never mentioned it, has he?’

‘Perhaps it is too sore a subject. I wonder how my guardian angel will get on with Henri and Celestine in the kitchen? I deprecate the fact that you have saddled me with an incubus.’

‘I don’t regret it,’ said Laura. ‘The sound of that thug smashing away at that dummy on your bed will haunt my dreams.’

The crucial days of the following week, so far as Basil Honfleur was concerned, were Saturday, Sunday and Monday, counting Saturday as the first day of the coach-tours week, as the company always did.

Dame Beatrice telephoned from the Stone House on the Friday afternoon at about four to ask how things were going. Honfleur, who had been about to return to his house, was lugubrious.

‘I had to talk with the strikers,’ he said, ‘and got my assistant to waylay every driver as the coaches arrived at the depot after such tours as had been on the road before all this disaffection got really serious, and I put it to them. Unless the remaining tours were carried out, and the rest of our commitments honoured, I told them, their jobs and their futures were in jeopardy. We are due to be taken over and made part of a huge combine, you know, after the end of the next season. I stressed this and promised that County Motors would do their best to protect every man’s interests when the take-over came about, but that it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, for me to speak up for men who seemed determined to chuck their jobs away.’

‘And what effect did this have?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. There was a lot of muttering and then one chap said that they’d better lose their jobs than their lives, and I could tell that the other fellows agreed with him. This was on Friday. I am calling another meeting at eight on Sunday evening, when the nine-day tours which have been on the road get back, but, frankly, I haven’t much hope. The drivers who were supposed to be going up to Scotland tomorrow morning have stuck their feet in and absolutely refused to budge.’

‘How many tours does that affect?’

‘More than I care to think about. There won’t be the Skye tour, or the one which goes up to John o’ Groats, Royal Deeside is off and and so are the Trossachs, the Ayrshire and Arran tour and the nine-day tour of the Central Highlands. In fact, ironic though it may sound, the only fellow willing to take a coach out at all at present is the driver who takes the party to Swansea to embark on the ferry to Cork, and he is none too keen to do even that much. Even the drivers who do the foreign tours are dragging their feet because they have to take passengers to spend a night in Southamption before crossing to Le Havre. Pusillanimous twits! I only just stopped myself from calling them a bunch of cowards.’

‘It might have been injudicious, under the circumstances in which you find youself, to have called their courage in question. Did you make them the offer you outlined to Laura, that you would send them out in twos?’