Noonday and Night

and enjoyed almost unlimited freedom, except from responsibility.

He greeted Dame Beatrice cordially and said that he was glad to see her.

‘It’s these missing drivers of ours,’ he went on, when they were seated. ‘A most mysterious business. We can’t think what can have happened to them.’

‘No, indeed,’ Dame Beatrice agreed. ‘All the same, if I may invoke the formidable shade of Lady Bracknell and reiterate her concise opinion on such matters, to lose one driver may be a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. I suppose your directors have informed the police?’

‘Yes, of course, but you know what the police are! Report a missing child and they’ll turn on the whole works – dog-handlers, walkie-talkies, make life hell for every male in the neighbourhood, drag every river, canal, gravel-pit and dirty pond in the area and set a whole squad of flatties to search woods and beat bushes. Report a missing man, particularly if he’s married and the father of a family, and what do they do? Look at you as though you need to have your head examined and ask whether you know how many men go missing from their homes every year and are never traced.’

‘A fair enough question, of course. There comes a time in most men’s lives when they sicken of the trivial round, the common task, and yearn to explore fresh woods and pastures new.’

‘The police seem to think these men don’t want to be found.’

‘The police may well be right. They so often are right in matters which fall within their vast experience.’

‘You mean you’re not interested? The directors did hope you might be. They say they could believe that one of our steady, respectable fellows had felt the urge to cut loose and go missing, but that I must surely admit that for two of them to go off within the space of four weeks, and apparently vanish without trace, does take a bit of swallowing. They say even the police admit that and so, I suppose, do I.’

‘Oh, I admit it, too, but there is an aspect of the matter which no doubt the police have touched on.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, it seems to me that your drivers are in almost a unique position, even more so than sailors or commercial travellers. There they are, under no official supervision once the tour leaves the depot. They have a suitcase already packed, money in their pockets and anything from five days to a fortnight, I suppose, in which to put their plans into operation.’

‘I think that’s an exaggerated view of the amount of freedom they have. Hotel managers, for example, would soon be on the blower to us if a coach failed to arrive on the appointed day.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. To turn to another aspect, I suppose your men are happy in their work?’

‘Happy? I don’t see why they shouldn’t be. We’re a subsidiary of the bus company, you know, and we recruit our men from among their drivers. It’s a promotion for those whom we employ. The pay is better and the conditions are excellent. Then, of course, there are the perks.’

‘The perks?’

‘The drivers put up at the same hotels as the passengers and get the same food. At the end of each tour most of the passengers put something into the hat and when you consider that we run the tours from the end of April to the middle of October, these tips can amount to something pretty substantial. It’s not a job that chaps would chuck up without a jolly good reason, I can tell you.’

‘I see. No wonder the defection of two of these fortunate men has upset and perplexed the directors. I should be interested to hear more. Begin at the beginning, if you will. I am intrigued by what you tell me. How does it all start? What happens after the middle of October, I mean?’

‘In November we issue a leaflet setting out what we expect to do during the following year. About mid- December we follow this up with a glossy, colourful brochure with photographs, little route-maps, full details of all tours, prices, insurance cover, hotels, luncheon stops, special attractions and so on. These brochures can be picked up at any of our booking offices and we also send one to every passenger who has ever travelled with us over the last five years or so.’

‘Really? You have a regular clientele, then?’

‘Oh, rather! People travel with us year after year. Some of them book again – provisionally, of course – almost as soon as they get back. There’s terrific competition for the front seats, as you’d expect. Of course, we have a great deal to offer. If they did the tours privately, using the same lunch-stops and hotels as we do, it could cost them twice as much as they pay us. On our very popular nine-day tours, for example, which go out on the Saturday morning and return in the evening of the Sunday week, we reckon to put the coach up at two four-star hotels and the other hotels are usually three-star or, out in the wilds, the very best we can get.’

‘So you receive no complaints from your passengers.’

Basil Honfleur laughed.

‘Of course we get complaints, and we investigate every one. After all, our whole concern rests upon good-will and satisfaction. Sometimes the same complaint comes from several sources. In that case, as often as not, we remove that particular hotel from our list. Usually we find, though, that solitary individual complaints are not justified. There are people who make a hobby of complaining. Most of them write to the newspapers or the BBC, some write to their MP and some write to us. They don’t seem happy unless they’re nursing some fancied grievance. However, they are the exceptions so far as our passengers are concerned and as they usually travel with us only the once, we’re not too terribly concerned with them. Of course, as I said, we do investigate every complaint we receive, just in case there’s something in it, but there very seldom is.’

‘And what kind of people travel with you more than once?’

‘Our passengers are mostly middle-aged and elderly, and there’s a preponderance of women – lonely spinsters, you know, or a couple of widows travelling together for company. We get more married couples than we used to, though. It means that Dad can have a chance to admire the scenery and take his ease on holiday, instead of being tied to the driver’s seat of the family car and having to keep his eyes on the road.’

‘Yes, I can appreciate that.’

‘At one time the people who booked with us liked travelling but had no car. That is far from being the case today. Years ago, too, the kind who took coach tours had never previously been inside a hotel. That certainly is not