Noonday and Night

wasting my time. Tell me, first of all, what you know about the trade in stolen antiques.’

‘None of us knew much about that,’ said Knight, reassured by what appeared to be a change of subject. ‘I reckon we all thought some sort of fiddle was going on, but it was no business of ours and everybody fiddles nowadays – you got to – so what?’

‘Some sort of fiddle, as you call it, in this case refers to a series of well-organised and very remunerative thefts which the police have been following up for months. The valuables were stolen by the knowledgeable Vittorio and disposed of through the County Motors coach organisation. Unfortunately for themselves, Noone and Daigh became involved (accidentally, I’m sure) then perhaps they refused to co-operate; anyway, they were liquidated, one in Derbyshire, the other in West Wales. Your board of directors called me in to investigate. My secretary and I found the bodies, as you probably know.’

Knight was silent. Dame Beatrice waited, her sharp black eyes on her victim. Laura tried to read the titles of the books and paperbacks in a small glass-fronted bookcase on the wall opposite to where she was sitting. The bodyguard studied an evil-eyed stuffed seagull in a glass case.

‘Look,’ said Knight at last, ‘this wog. Do you mean it wasn’t him that done Noone and Daigh? They were stabbed, so it said in the papers, and Eye-ties are reckoned to be handy with a knife.’

‘So are Commando troops,’ Dame Beatrice reminded him. ‘The man who broke into my home was carrying a Commando knife. He dropped it in his flight.’

‘So who do you reckon that was?’

‘I know who it could not have been. It could not have been Vittorio, for he was already dead, and by your hand.’

‘No, but he could have stabbed my two mates. He wasn’t dead then.’

‘Tell me, Mr Knight, if you had been on a tour (as driver of it, I mean) and Vittorio had asked you to move your coach while your passengers were sight-seeing, would you have obliged him?’

‘No, nor a dozen like him.’

‘Suppose another coach-driver had made the same request?’

Knight looked dubious. He had a long, melancholy face. This, and the bandage round his neck, gave him the lugubrious expression of a captive bird of prey.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it was one of our own chaps and he wanted a bit of help I suppose I’d oblige if I could, but it couldn’t be like that, you see, because we never only send the one coach at a time to any particular hotel or place, so the answer’s a lemon.’

‘You would not help the driver of another coach company, then?’

‘Why should I? They got their own headquarters to ’phone up to if they find their selves in trouble.’

‘Yet it seems certain that Noone and Daigh did move their coaches and, from what you have just told me, they must have been obeying an order or request from somebody they could scarcely refuse.’

‘That ’ud be Mr Honfleur. None of us wouldn’t do it for nobody else. We’d know it was all right, coming from him, because we’d know he’d take full responsibility.’

‘Thank you, Mr Knight. That is my own theory. Now let me tell you the true story of how you came to kill Vittorio.’

Knight stirred uneasily.

‘I don’t know as I want to hear it,’ he said. ‘You seem to have got it all worked out. I done it in fair fight and I’ll stand by what I done.’

‘How did you know that Vittorio was in Saighdearan?’

‘Mr Honfleur told me to pick him up there, him and a couple of suitcases. I thought nothing of it, being that most of us had had Vittorio on a tour some time or other, so when I knew my mates had been stabbed I reckoned they’d fell out with him about some of the fiddles as we all guessed was going on. Tales gets swapped around in a depot and some of ’em, perhaps, don’t lose nothing in the telling. I guess you knows how it is.’

‘We may take it for granted.’

‘Right. Well, Mr Honfleur put me on the Skye tour with orders to pick up Vittorio, like I said. He told me Vittorio had a key to the bungalow and I was to meet him there after I brought the coach back from Skye. Well, you know the rest, I reckon, but there wasn’t no murder. I fought fair and he fought dirty and I won. That’s all there was to it. Still, when I knowed he’d croaked I stripped him like as though he’d been surprised by a burglar while he laid in bed, and then I lit out for home.’

‘And it took you four days?’

‘I hitched lifts and laid up at nights while I cooked up a story to tell Mr Honfleur, seeing I’d left my coach-party stranded and hadn’t brought back no merchandise.’

‘I am still not clear why you suspected Vittorio of being the murderer of your two comrades.’

‘He was a wrong ’un, that’s why.’

‘An inadequate reason for suspecting him of murder. All the same, there is no doubt that he must have been an accessory after the fact. Well, now, Mr Knight, may I give you a piece of advice?’

‘You said you’d find me a lawyer.’

‘That is a promise I shall keep, of course. Meanwhile, you will find it to your advantage in the long run to give yourself up, confess to the fight and the killing and allow the police to take a sample of your blood. It was your blood on the bedding, was it not?’

CHAPTER 17

Sunset and Evening Star