Noonday and Night

CHAPTER 2

The Missing Coach-Drivers

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Almost a year went by before Dame Beatrice saw Basil Honfleur again, and when she did the meeting was neither of his seeking nor of hers, although both consented to its taking place.

As for the Jewish antique-dealer, she had telephoned again just after Christmas to say that she had sold both her shops and was going to America.

‘I suppose when she knew she’d been shown some pretty hot goods,’ said Laura, ‘she was in a bit of a flap, especially as she didn’t intend to go to the police.

‘You don’t think she bought the stuff from Vittorio at a reasonable figure and took it to America with her?’

‘Your imagination, as usual, is running away with you. If she recognised some of the pieces, possibly others would be able to do so. I hardly think it would be worth the risk. The receivers of stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, face heavy penalties if they are found out, you know, and Miss Mendel is not a foolish or a reckless woman.’

‘Would it be easy to take the contents of high-class antique shops out of the country?’

‘I do not think she has attempted to do that. I gather that she sold all her business interests over here before she left, and that, I imagine, would include the stock. But to matters of greater moment: what did you make of the letter from the chairman of County Motors which came by this morning’s post?’

‘A cry from the heart. Honfleur’s bosses, aren’t they? Are you dipping into the affair? They certainly want your help.’

‘I had better go and see them and find out more about the matter. It sounds interesting.’

‘Do I accompany you?’

‘No, George will take me. When the interview is over I shall come straight back here unless there is any good reason for my remaining, but I really cannot imagine what the motor-coach company thinks I can do in an affair of this sort. It is a case for the police.’

As a result of a telephone call to the chairman, who had written from his private address, Dame Beatrice found herself once again confronting Basil Honfleur, this time in his office from which he worked out the schedules and appointed the drivers for his branch of County Motors. It was what might be called the mother house of the coach company and his job was a good one. He had to report at board meetings, but otherwise he was his own master 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 clientèle, 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 true today. You hear them discussing holidays in Greece and Yugoslavia, not to mention Italy and the Costa Brava. They’re not poor, our present-day clients. You should see what they buy in the way of souvenirs and presents. How the devil they get all the stuff home I sometimes wonder. You find, too, that a number of them have already had a holiday on the Continent that very same summer. They tell us they like to take one of our tours ‘to unwind’. Times have changed with a vengeance! Instead of saving up for a rainy day they reckon the Welfare State will provide the umbrella for that, so the slogan is: You can’t take it with you. And, of course, their children are in good jobs, so they don’t need any future provision made for them. Add the bogeyman Inflation, and you can’t blame them for their attitude. I wonder, though, how much longer it can last.’

‘However, while it does last, your company is not ungrateful.’

‘Well, hang it all, our passengers get their money’s worth, and they know it. Of course, they’d do things a lot cheaper in a caravan or at a holiday camp, but they prefer to travel in our coaches. After all, it’s a grand way to see the country, even if you can’t choose your stopping-places. Then, something which appeals very much to the women, all the meals are laid on and there’s no washing up to do.’

‘The meals? Ah, yes, a most important part of any holiday.’

‘Also, there are no problems for them with regard to their luggage. Once it’s on the coach we handle it for them everywhere they stay. Apart from putting it outside their bedroom doors so that we can collect it while they’re at breakfast each morning, they don’t have to tote it about at all, and that’s a big concession to elderly people.’

‘And the meals?’

‘Oh, we get very few complaints about those. We used also to provide early tea and daily and Sunday newspapers free of charge, but most hotels haven’t the staff nowadays to take round early tea, so they put a contraption in each room so that people can make their own. We discontinued newspapers because of the cost, and the same goes for afternoon teas.’

‘No afternoon teas? That must have caused some heart-burning.’

‘Oh, the driver always pulls up at some suitable place at some time between four o’clock and five, so that those who can’t do without their cuppa can get one. The only difference is that it isn’t included nowadays in the fare. We do include after-lunch and after-dinner coffee, though. We always ask to have it served in the lounge. It makes a social occasion of it, you see, with general conversation. Helps people to get together and sort themselves out.’

‘And do people object to paying extra for their teas? Would they be inclined to reproach the driver?’

‘I’ve never heard of that. From our point of view, you know, the teas were a waste of money, particularly in Scotland and the West Country. When people have eaten bread, butter and jam, baps, scones and cakes, or Cornish pasties and perhaps stewed fruit and clotted cream at tea-time, many of them are not hungry enough to do justice to a three- or four-course dinner, especially when they’ve had a cooked breakfast and a three-course lunch as well as their tea.’

‘How are the halts for tea-time organised?’

‘They’re not. It’s up to the driver to pick out suitable stopping-places.’

‘That seems to lay an unreasonable burden on them, does it not?’

‘Well, I admit they don’t like it much. The easiest stops nowadays are on the motorways, of course, but we don’t use those more than we can help because it means such monotonous travel. In remote districts, though, it’s sometimes very difficult to find a suitable café at about the right time of day, and then perhaps the driver does come in for some criticism.’

‘Would that be sufficient to cause disaffection among your drivers?’

‘Enough to make them pack in the job and beetle off without giving notice, do you mean? Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d do that. After all, if they don’t like the conditions, they have only to say so and go back to the buses. There would be no need to disappear off the face of the earth as these two fellows seem to have done.’

‘It really does seem curious, but how do I come into the affair?’

‘Well, the board of directors seem to think they’d like you to make your own enquiries without reference to what the police may or may not intend to do.’

‘Their resources are very much greater than mine, you know.’

‘I pointed that out and said I didn’t see what you could do.’

‘Would you asperse me and my efforts?’

‘No, of course not. As my chairman pointed out, the police are not really interested, so their enquiries will be a matter of routine, not of urgency.’

‘Have you yourself formed any theory which might account for your men’s disappearance?’

‘Not unless they’ve both had domestic troubles. We’ve contacted passengers and so have the police, but there isn’t a clue. Nothing has gone wrong on any of our tours, so far as we know. These two drivers simply disappeared and haven’t been seen since. I cannot understand it. I’ll tell you something, though, which convinces my chairman that there’s some kind of mystery afoot. In Pembrokeshire we mislaid a coach as well as its driver. It reappeared, but miles from where the driver should have left it. We found it abandoned in Swansea.’

‘And where exactly, did you mislay it?’

‘It disappeared at some time during the middle of the morning from Dantwylch, right out on the west coast. That’s miles away from Swansea, where the Welsh police tracked it down.’

‘This, I gather, was the second incident, but you have mislaid no other coaches?’

‘No. We’re glad of that, of course, but it’s the missing drivers who concern us. The driver-courier is the king-pin of any tour. He’s the all-pervasive, all-persuasive adhesive which binds the coach-party together and holds it firm. He’s the father-figure, if you like, of the tourists. They trust him absolutely.’

‘And you have lost a couple of these paternal fixatives! Dear me!’

‘And replacements aren’t easy to find, especially as we’ve got another chap on sick leave. We’re having to over-schedule our other men, and that’s not going to make us very popular with them. A driver isn’t a bit thrilled 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?’

‘Near enough, although we think it had been moved. Anyway, after the passengers had hung about and made all sorts of enquiries, one of them – most improperly, of course – drove the coach back to the hotel. He then made a report which, when the driver did not show up that evening, the management relayed to us.’

‘And your second man?’

‘Daigh got himself and his coach spirited away during a long coffee-stop in Dantwylch. This was on a trip from Tenby to visit Dantwylch Cathedral and the ruins of the bishop’s palace.’

‘A long coffee-stop? How long?’

‘About an hour and a half. The coach pulled up at a spot convenient to the sightseers and then went off to the local carpark. The arrangement was that it would return for the passengers at a given time to take them on to Fishguard for lunch, but, of course, it never arrived.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘Some of the passengers went to the car park and found that the coach had been there, but had only stayed a very short time., They returned to the others and they all hung about until a policeman told them they were obstructing the footway. They informed him of what had happened. The upshot was that a local coach was laid on and the day’s outing proceeded according to plan, except that the passengers arrived extremely late for lunch. Eventually the coach was traced to Swansea. We sent up another driver as soon as we got a ’phone call from the manager of the hotel at Tenby after the passengers had been taken back there for the night, and the police soon traced our own coach, so that was all right so far, except that they haven’t traced Daigh.’

‘It seems a most mysterious business. Can you supply me with a list of the passengers who took these two tours and give me their addresses?’

‘Yes, of course. Honfleur’s desk-clerks will know. I’ll call him. They’ll have all the details at his office.’

‘And can I possibly find out which of the passengers have travelled with you before? I understand from Mr Honfleur that the majority of your clients, having sampled the amenities you offer, are inclined very much to book with you again.’

‘Again and again, most of them. It’s very gratifying. I will certainly obtain the information you require and will let you have it at the earliest possible moment. I am so grateful that you are prepared to help us. I am not at all in agreement with Honfleur that it is a waste of time. The police will do their best, but I think a private enquiry may obtain quicker results.’