Noonday and Night

when he comes back from six days in Yorkshire on Friday night and is told he’s got to take another coach-load for a nine-day trip to Scotland starting early on Saturday morning.’

‘I sympathise with him.’

‘So do I, but what can I do? We keep within the legal limits of working hours, of course, even when we have to pile it on like that, and we try to even out the extra duties so far as we possibly can, but it’s very unfair to switch a man on to a route he has never travelled before. He doesn’t know the hotels or where to stop for mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea, let alone give out bits of history and other information which the passengers expect. Of course we pay out bonuses, but it isn’t, any of it, good enough and it can’t go on.’

‘Have you spoken to your other drivers about the disappearances? Has none of them anything to suggest?’

‘Nothing at all. They’ve heard no rumours; they’ve been told no secrets. They assure us that the missing men had given no indication whatever that anything was wrong. If there had been anything amiss, I’m sure they would have known. They’re a pretty close-knit bunch and have been together for years. The passengers get pretty close-knit, too. It’s very interesting to see how sociable and gregarious most people are.’

‘You mean many of them have travelled together before?’

‘No, not that. It’s unlikely that they would, because, although they travel with us time and again, naturally they choose different tours each year. All the same, it’s true to say that whereas a collection of individuals boards the coach at the starting place and the pick-up points, all of them keeping a jealous eye on their rights and their possessions, by the time the second day comes round they’re a unit; they’ve fused; they’re an entity. But you must have the proper chap in charge for it to work that way.’

‘You lost one man and had a coach borrowed and then abandoned in Wales and you lost another man in the Peak District, you tell me. It seems that there must surely be some connection.’

‘By the way, the Derbyshire man, Noone, was the first, not the second, to disappear.’

‘I wonder whether that fact has any significance? Derbyshire and West Wales, where, as you say, the disappearances took place, are a good many miles apart. According to the letter I received from your chairman, however, there does seem to have been one connection between the two incidents?’

‘Oh? What was that? Something significant, do you mean?’

‘I hardly know whether it is significant or not, but it is certainly interesting because it seems to have provided a requisite opportunity for the drivers to vanish if they had planned to do so.’

‘That’s interesting. How do you mean?’

‘Your chairman informs me that in each case the coach was empty when the driver disappeared. Could this mean that the passengers were out of the coach long enough for something to happen to the driver?’

‘Yes, could be. The Derbyshire tour includes an afternoon visit to Hulliwell Hall and we always allow plenty of time for that. There is a free morning and then the coach sets off immediately after lunch and the passengers can take their time over their sightseeing. Those who want tea can buy it at the Hall and the coach gets back to the hotel in time for people to take a bath and to change for dinner.’

‘Whereabouts is the hotel?’

‘We generally use a hotel in Buxton, but for this one particular tour we did not.’

‘Any special reason?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, there was. They had a vast literary conference in Buxton that week and the hotels were full, so we had to make other arrangements.’

‘At short notice?’

‘Oh, no. Buxton told us in March.’

‘So where did the coach stay?’

‘We fixed up a place in Dovedale, but I can’t see that the change of hotel would account for the disappearance of the driver.’

‘Does the coach remain at the same hotel for the duration of the tour? Are there, I mean, daily outings, or does the coach move on to other hotels?’

‘It varies. Mostly the coach moves on, but the Derbyshire tour stays all five nights in the same place and goes out each day as you suggest. In the case of the Welsh tour, we stay a night in Monmouth, three nights at Tenby, a night at Towyn and the last night in Hereford.’

Dame Beatrice’s next interview, by mutual arrangement, was with the chairman of County Motors. She made further enquiry about the coach tours.

‘West Wales?’ he said. ‘Well, we think it’s a particularly good tour, very popular, and Daigh, the missing driver, was one of our best men.’

‘Well, we must try to find him. What other tours are there?’

‘Oh, you are going to take on the job, then? My board will be delighted. Another tour goes up to Scotland, staying one night in Yorkshire, one in Edinburgh and two in a new hotel near Fort William, from which we go over to Skye for a day. We have many others, but the Skye tour is one of the most popular. We come back through Pitlochry and Perth, go on to Edinburgh and then across the Lowlands to Carlisle and the Lakes, and so home by way of Grange-over-Sands and Warwick.’

‘And when, exactly, did the drivers disappear?’

‘Noone vanished while his passengers were visiting Hulliwell Hall. They had the morning free to explore Dovedale or go to Buxton and then the coach moved off at two o’clock to give them plenty of time to see the Hall and have tea there, if they wanted it. Honfleur says they would be out of the coach for the better part of a couple of hours.’

‘And during that time the driver vanished and has not been traced. But the coach, I assume, was where he had left it?’