‘A policeman come up and one or two of the gentlemen explained what had happened.’
‘And then?’
‘He sent two of them up to the car-park, but, of course, Mr Daigh and the coach wasn’t there. Funny you should ask about friends in the town, though, now I come to think of it. Mind you, we thought he was only joking, but he did say, pulling our legs, like, mine and my sister’s (very pleasant he always made himself to everybody), he did say as he might be picking up his girlfriend in Dantwylch. “And her trousseau,” he said. “Funny, some of the things these women like,” he said. Then he laughed, very pleasant he was, and off we went to Dantwylch and, of course, we never see him again once he’d drove off to the car park. I was real sorry, I can tell you.’
‘Did the two gentlemen find out whether the coach had ever reached the car park?’
‘Oh, yes. It had got there all right, but it wasn’t there when they arrived. There was two other coaches, they said, but not ours. The spoke to the drivers, but they couldn’t tell them nothing.’
‘Can you remember their names?’
‘Our two gentlemen, do you mean? One was Mr Ames. I don’t know the other one’s name. He was travelling on his own, I think, wasn’t he, Maud? Mr Ames was married, but the other gentleman
‘Nice and polite, but kept to himself except at the table,’ said Miss Harvey. ‘Nobody couldn’t keep to theirselves there, because of the numbers, you see.’
‘But the other coach drivers had seen your coach come in, had they?’
‘No, but they’d seen it drive out. They didn’t think nothing of it, because they thought our driver was going off to pick us up, but, of course, it was much too early for that. It wouldn’t have been no more than about eleven o’clock, they said.’
Slightly wearied by the witnesses, Dame Beatrice went to Mr Ames’ address. He was at work, but his wife was at home.
‘He can’t tell you anything more than I can,’ she said. ‘We’ve discussed it over and over. I’m glad the Company’s doing something about it as well as the police. The last we heard of Mr Daigh, he was going to pick us up again at twelve. I wanted coffee and the Cathedral, but Tom thought better of a pub, so I went with him, of course, and never saw the Cathedral at all, but when some of them told me what a long climb up it had been I was glad I hadn’t gone.’
‘So at what time did you and your husband return to the picking-up place?’
‘Oh, not until just on twelve. Tom said there wasn’t any point and it was a very nice pub, so we got into conversation and stopped on.’
‘And then you waited for your coach, but it did not materialise.’
‘That’s right. Very put out we all were. Well, I mean, you don’t pay that sort of money to waste time hanging about on your holiday and being jostled on the pavement, do you?’
‘What had your husband to say about his visit to the coach station?’
‘The policeman suggested it, so he and Mr Mellick went, but it wasn’t any good. They asked around and there was no doubt our coach had been there, because another coach driver had seen it drive off.’
‘With nobody in it except for Mr Daigh, I suppose?’
‘He was sure there was nobody but the driver, and who else could have been in it? We were all turned out of it down in the town. Nobody stayed on it. Sometimes they do, at the coffee stops, but not this time.’
‘Did your husband speak to anybody else who had actually seen Mr Daigh?’
‘Oh, yes. He and Mr Mellick spoke to the man on the exit barrier. The car-park is sort of automatic, you see. You drive up and snatch a parking card from an automatic machine and the barrier lifts and lets you through. Then when you leave there’s a little sort of office and you hand in your card and the parking fee to the man and he pulls a lever that raises the barrier to let you out. It’s to prevent cars being stolen from the car-park, you see. You can’t take your car out without you can produce your card.’
‘It sounds an excellent system.’
‘Oh, we’ve had it for years in Poole, where I come from, only our car-park is multi-storey,’ said the witness complacently.
‘So, at Dantwylch, nobody in authority need be aware that a car or a coach has come in, but there is always a check on a vehicle going out?’
‘That’s right. The man on the barrier remembered our coach perfectly, and, near enough, the time.’
‘Oh, he noticed the time, did he?’
‘Eleven o’clock, give or take five minutes, he told my husband.’
‘Did he mention whether he recognised the driver?’
‘He didn’t say. Not that it would have done much good to ask, I don’t suppose. There’s a lot of shift-work, I dare say, in these car-parks, especially in holiday places. Long hours, you see. You couldn’t have one man on duty all the time. Like enough he wouldn’t have recognised Mr Daigh unless he’d just happened to be on duty the other times the coach parked there on the Pembroke tour.’
‘And there was no suggestion that more than one man was in the coach, I suppose?’
‘Nobody asked. Well, as I said, there couldn’t have been, could there? We all got off the coach at the bus stop where Mr Daigh set us down.’
‘He might have picked up somebody in the car-park, I suppose – somebody he knew and who had asked him for a lift.’
‘What! A lift into Swansea when we were due to be picked up in an hour’s time to go to lunch in Fishguard? Surely he wouldn’t have been so silly! Even if he was, well, I mean, why wasn’t he with the coach when the police found it? He was hijacked, that’s what my husband says.’
CHAPTER 5
The Bishop’s Palace
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Following almost but not quite the same procedure as in Derbyshire, this time Dame Beatrice took her secretary with her and left her chauffeur at home. Laura was a first-class driver and, in any case, was what she herself described as ‘mad to get in on the man-hunt’ which she regarded as more of a holiday spree than a serious quest.
They followed the route taken by Driver Daigh’s coach-party, but stayed only one night at Tenby following the night at Monmouth. Laura commented upon the Monnow bridge.
‘Pity there’s no access to the public,’ she said, eyeing the structure with its fort-like aspect. ‘If people are allowed up into the porter’s lodging over the Westgate at Winchester, I don’t see why we can’t be allowed the same sort of access to the lodging over the Monnow bridge.’
‘The pavement is narrow. There might be congestion and foot-passengers not wishing to visit the lodging might be forced into the road, don’t you think?’
‘Well, I find this a tantalising town,’ said Laura. ‘I got up early this morning and went to look at the castle where H. Five was born. There’s very little of it left, and what there is appears to be on land which belongs to the military.’
They lunched at the hotel and then, without stopping at Swansea, made for the hotel at Tenby where the coach-party had stayed for three nights. Enquiries there led to nothing and both the receptionist and the manager proved a trifle restive, already, they stated, having been questioned exhaustively by the police.
Dame Beatrice and Laura remained there for the night and early on the following morning they set out for Dantwylch and drove straight to the car-park. Here they met with the same kind of reception as they had experienced in Tenby. However, Dame Beatrice’s questions were answered civilly enough, although no fresh information was forthcoming and the man on duty at the exit could give no description of the County Motors driver.
‘So now back to Swansea, I suppose,’ said Laura, ‘although it seems a pity not to take a look at the Cathedral while we’re here.’