Noonday and Night

CHAPTER 13

The Story of a Disappearance

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The telephone call had ended with a short, incredulous exclamation from Honfleur, after which he rang off, but on the following morning he rang up the Stone House again. Laura was out for an early morning ride, so Dame Beatrice herself took the call.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ said the voice at the other end. Dame Beatrice cackled.

‘Like the White Queen, I can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast,’ she said, ‘and I haven’t had breakfast yet.’

‘Knight has turned up again, safe and sound.’

‘Really? So where has he been all this time?’

‘Oh, his story is simple enough. He got a knock on the head and lost his memory.’

‘Do you mean somebody attacked him?’

‘I suppose you could call it that.’

‘Do the Scottish police know that he has reappeared?’

‘I’ve told our own chaps, so I suppose they’ll notify Inverness or whoever has to be told.’

‘I should like to hear Knight’s story.’

‘Well, it’s going to be a nice day. Why don’t you come along? Meet me in my office at…?’

‘Four?’

‘Right, I’ll have Knight with me and my secretary can make us some tea.’

‘Do the other drivers know of Knight’s return?’

‘Oh, rather! What’s more, I was able to persuade them to call off the strike, so although today’s coaches won’t go out, there shouldn’t be any difficulty about tomorrow.’

‘They seem to have changed their minds very quickly.’

‘Oh, I’m keeping my promise of sending them out in twos. They insist on that.’

‘So which tours will go out tomorrow?’

‘North Wales, North Devon, St Ives, Llandudno, Yorkshire Wolds, Tenby, Lake District and, of course, our Swiss tour from the airport. It’s all perfectly splendid. With the Saturday tours all cancelled for today, I’ve got plenty of drivers free and by the time the Sunday tours, double-manned, get back and everybody is home and dry, I’m sure our troubles will all be over.’

‘It is to be hoped so, but we still haven’t found the murderer. Four o’clock in your office, then. I shall be accompanied by Laura and the guardian angel supplied by her husband.’

‘What will happen to Knight?’ asked Laura when she returned. ‘The police will want to question him.’

‘Yes, indeed, and from our own point of view it will be very interesting to hear what Driver Knight has to say. I would like you to take his story down word for word and then transcribe it for me. It will make a fascinating study.’

‘Because he wasn’t murdered, whereas the other two were? He may just have been lucky, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m sure he murdered Vittorio.’

‘In self-defence, perhaps.’

The interview with Knight took place in Honfleur’s office, but Dame Beatrice, her escort, Laura and the driver had it to themselves. Honfleur left a note with his secretary to let Dame Beatrice know that he had been called to a meeting in Bristol with the directors of the firm who were to take over his company. He apologised for his absence, but added that his secretary was fully briefed and would be able to answer any queries which might arise. It was clear, from the young woman’s demeanour, that she fully expected to sit in on the interview, but Dame Beatrice decided otherwise and in the most kindly but determined way dispensed with her presence.

‘Now, Mr Knight,’ she said, when the secretary had left them, ‘I am retained, as I expect you know, by your directors, to look into matters which have been troubling the Company since Mr Noone set out for Derbyshire. I am to find out, if I can, why he was murdered and exactly what your own experiences have been.’

‘I’m lucky to be alive, I suppose,’ said Knight, indicating a bandage round his neck. ‘If I hadn’t had a Commando training when I was a young fellow, I might not be as tough as I am. Comes back to you, you know, when you find yourself in a tight spot. More than thirty years since I was demobbed, but I’m as fit as ever I was, and a good thing, too, I reckon.’

‘I shall be glad of a full account. You say you are as fit as ever you were, but I understand that you had been ill and away from work before you took this coach up to Scotland.’

‘First time ever, but sooner or later the job finds you out. I got a spot of gastric trouble and had to lie up for a week or two, that’s all. Didn’t ought to have come back as soon as I did, but one of my mates told me how short-handed Mr Honfleur was, with Noone and Daigh gone missing, so I reckoned I’d better help out.’

‘Very self-sacrificing, and your only reward was to get knocked on the head, I am told; and your neck, I see, is bandaged. But please begin at the beginning. I have had an account of the tour from a passenger, but your own story will be a great deal more valuable, as you seem to have been the victim of a most unpleasant and, I daresay, alarming experience.’

‘You want me to start…’

‘From the time your coach moved off from the depot, if you will be so good.’

‘I see the young lady is taking notes.’

‘She will read them back to you later on, if you wish.’

‘Like a bloomin’ police station, isn’t it? Oh, well, I’ve got nothing to hide. I reported for duty as usual on the Saturday morning and I’m told it’s the Skye tour as I’m to take on. I wasn’t too keen, having done Scotland previous only as far as Edinburgh except once, and then a different schedule – the Trossachs and that – but I’d said I’d muck in, whatever Mr Honfleur wanted me to do, so I showed willing, as they say, and we got the luggage stowed and the first few passengers aboard and off we went, only about eight minutes behind time. Wouldn’t have been that, only two people coming by car were involved in a collision and had to come on by taxi. A bit shaken up they were, too, and not at all sure whether they wanted to make the tour or not, but our inspector cheered them up and they came. Silly not to, when they’d paid their money.

‘Well, I picked up a couple of people here and another one or two there, along the route, you know, but the main lot joined us in Canonbury. That bus station needs enlarging or else to be taken right out of the town. Still, that’s by the way and just my usual bit of bellyache.

‘We made the lunch stop all right and later on I allowed twenty minutes for tea. I got the coach in at six for dinner and the night. No problems; passengers a quiet lot, coach running sweet, everybody happy.’

‘Where was that first overnight stop?’

‘Where was our first overnight stop? Oh, in Yorkshire at Harrogate. One of our favourite hotels. Very popular with the coach parties because not only is it well situated – close to the park and all that – but the accommodation and food are very high-class, and a lot of camera-clicking goes on because the coach is always met by a chap dressed in the old horse-coach rig-out and he blows a coach-horn to welcome the visitors. We only stayed there the one night, and then we went on to Edinburgh by way of Newcastle and Carter Bar and, the old bus running like a song, we fetched up in fine weather at the overnight stop at just after six. Everybody pleased with the hotel, Princes Street crowded and the traffic nonstop as usual, and then we set off in the rain next morning, and me with no experience of the route once we’d crossed the Forth Bridge.’

‘But you had been to Saighdearan once before and you were able to give two of your party the names of the mountains they saw when the coach stopped for lunch on the shores of, I think, Loch Earn.’

‘Oh, Lord, yes, I forgot my first trip that way. Anyhow, I’d done my homework the night before. Always reckon to do that, you know. Never like to plead ignorant. Matter of professional pride, I suppose. Anything more you want to know about the trip?’

He sounded jaunty and cocksure, but Dame Beatrice knew that he was uneasy and that his further account of the tour might be only partly true.

‘Nothing more about the tour,’ she said, ‘but I should like as clear and as detailed a description as possible of what happened after the party had returned from the day’s outing to Skye.’

‘Oh, ah, Skye. We had to wait a bit at Kyle of Lochalsh for the bigger boat to take the coach, you know. The trip passed off all right, although people would have liked to see a lot more of Skye than we had time for, and then—’

‘When you got back you were attacked?’

‘Yes, that was all of a rum go, that was. I thought my number was up, and that’s a fact. Third time unlucky, I guessed.’

‘Third time?’

‘Well, Noone and Daigh, you know. Both copped it, didn’t they? So when these two blokes broke into my bedroom just as I’d settled down to bone up on the next day’s run from Fort William to Perth, I reckoned I’d had it, just like the other two.’

‘Can you describe the men?’

‘Not really. They had nylon stockings over their heads. One I reckon was a spade.’

‘A black man?’

‘That’s right. They both were wearing gloves, but I caught a sight of a bit of bare brown wrist while they were gagging me and tying me up.’

‘Did you have no chance to raise the alarm?’

‘No chance at all. They come busting in and were on me and the gag in my mouth before I could let out a single, solitary yip.’

‘Were you fully dressed?’

‘What’s that got to do with it? Matter of fact, I was in trousers and shirt and my dressing-gown.’

‘Had you left your bedroom door open?’

‘No, of course not. One of them must have been on the staff of the hotel, I reckon, because he must have had a master-key to the rooms.’

‘Could you not have called out while they were stripping off your dressing-gown?’

‘Stripping off my dressing-gown? Look here, madam, what are you getting at?’

‘Oh, I took it for granted that they would have seen to it that you were fully dressed when they spirited you away. Tell me about that.’

‘I want to know what my dressing-gown has to do with it.’

‘I have told you.’

‘You haven’t the right to question me like this. All I’ve got to say I’ve said to the police.’

‘Very well. By the way, are you preparing to ask for compensation?’

‘Compensation?’

‘I have no authority to make promises on behalf of County Motors, of course, but it seems, from your story (and I do hope you will be good enough to continue it), that you have suffered physical injury and, I assume, unlawful captivity while employed upon the Company’s business.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, Mr Honfleur is a decent chap, so he’ll see I get my rights. As for unlawful captivity, well, you can say that again. They sat there in the room, me trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven excepting that I’d still got my guts inside me, although my heart, I don’t mind telling you, was just about in my boots, and then, when it was dark, which comes latish, as you may have noticed, as far north as that, they forced me, at knife-point, to get down the stairs and out into the open.’

‘So they had not tied your legs?’

‘They did, until they were ready for us to leave. Then this darkie pulled out a dirty great flick-knife and stood behind me and reached round and put it at my throat while the other chap untied my legs and told me to get moving. I had a shot at grabbing the darkie’s wrist and got his nasty snick on my neck.’

‘Your bedroom was in the three-storey wing, then.’

‘Yes, right at the top. I don’t think any of my passengers were near me. I believe they were all on the ground floor in the bungalow part of the building. Still, even if any of them had been handy, I wouldn’t have cared to risk a shout.’

‘And, in any case, you were gagged, you say. So you emerged into the front yard of the hotel. What happened then?’

‘They forced me into a car and drove me a few hundred yards down the road in the direction of Fort William. They took me into a big, empty house which looked about ready to fall down and kept me there.’

‘And, later, released you.’

‘That’s right, in a sense, I suppose.’

‘Did they feed you?’

‘Yes, with sandwiches from the lorry-drivers’ caff down the road and tea out of a thermos.’

‘What demands did they make?’

‘Demands? Nothing, except to tell them the exact route the coaches take to get back home from Perth. Well, there was no secret about that, so I told them. When I’d done and had answered several questions about the hotels we were accustomed to stop at, the nig hit me over the head and the next thing I knew I was walking into Mr Honfleur’s office here.’

‘With no idea of how you got back from Saighdearan?’

‘I suppose I must have thumbed lifts, but I’ve no recollection of it.’

‘But your memory has returned to you?’

‘Except for what happened between the knock on the head and me walking in on Mr Honfleur yesterday afternoon.’

‘What an interesting story! And you have no idea why you were abducted in this strange fashion?’

‘None at all.’

‘But you were able to leave this tumbledown house of your own volition.’

‘I must have, mustn’t I? But I can’t remember a thing about it.’

‘And there was no sign of these men?’

‘Neither hair nor hide.’

‘They had untied you, I assume.’

‘Must have done, mustn’t they?’

‘While you were at Saighdearan did you make contact with a man named Vittorio?’

‘Make contact? Me? No. Why should I?’ (But the question had rattled him.)

‘Only because I have some reason to believe that he was in the neighbourhood at the same time as you were. You know him, of course?’

‘Not to say know him. He came on my coach a year or two back to buy up some antiques or something of that sort, and I believe he used to go along with other drivers from time to time on the same sort of job, but I haven’t seen him around for a year or more.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Laura. ‘I was not going to read out my shorthand notes in front of Knight. He might have started thinking about his dressing-gown, which we happen to know was neatly packed and stowed away in his suitcase.’

‘His kidnappers may have tidy minds.’

‘The man is a liar of liars. His whole story is a fabrication and not a very clever one at that. All that boloney about a black man!’

‘The boy at the hotel mentioned a black man.’

‘Yes, but he meant Vittorio.’

‘I have suggested that to the police. No doubt they will have confirmed it by now.’

‘And Knight’s loss of memory which he claims happened after he was knocked on the head! What do you think he was up to during his so-called disappearance?’

‘Murdering Vittorio.’

‘Then he must be Carstairs!’

‘We have already decided that point, I think.’

‘Look, though, are we sure that Knight and Carstairs are not the same man? It would simplify things enormously if they were.’

‘No, no. Things are simple enough. The jigsaw is not a difficult one. It only remains for us to fit the pieces together in a manner which will convince a jury and that, at the moment, we are not in a position to do.’

‘You mean you know all the answers?’

‘So would you, if you would rid yourself of this yearning for Carstairs and Knight to be one and the same man. What about the descriptions we have had of both? We must accept evidence when it is provided by unbiased witnesses. I think there is no doubt, as you say, that Knight’s story is a fabrication, except in so far as the wound in his neck is concerned. I made him take the bandage off, as you know. The snick is neither deep nor dangerous, but it must have bled fairly considerably when it was inflicted.’

‘Yes, but by whom? Carstairs?’

‘Vittorio, I think, and then Knight killed him.’

‘So we are going on the assumption that Knight murdered Vittorio. But that looks as though Vittorio knew that Knight had murdered Noone and Daigh, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh, not necessarily at all. To my mind it does not follow.’

‘But Knight has told us all those lies. Do you think he told Basil Honfleur the same story as he told us?’

‘Oh, probably. I would not call Knight a very inventive man.’

‘You don’t believe Knight killed the other two drivers, but you do think he murdered Vittorio. Why?’

‘Let us say that our jigsaw contains some extraneous pieces and that now we have to select the one piece which fits.’