‘I should like to talk with one of these young ladies.’
‘Not so awfully young, actually. Mrs Wade has been with us ten years and Miss Morley for seven.’
‘That is splendid. If they have been subjected to chat and chaff for those lengths of time, they must have formed some definite opinions about your various men.’
‘Oh, I expect so. Anyway, talk to them by all means. At this time in the season they were unlikely to be very busy, as practically all the bookings will have been made, so there will be little except cancellations to be dealt with.’
Dame Beatrice interviewed Mrs Wade first, and across her counter, as though it was an enquiry about travel. Mrs Wade was a cheerful, plump, pretty woman in her mid-thirties, accustomed, because of her job, to answering questions and retaining a helpful demeanour. Such evidence as she could offer was independently reinforced by Miss Morley at a separate interview which took place just outside the booking hall.
‘Cyril Noone was a quiet fellow. Not much to say for himself, but would do anything for anybody.’
‘Including, perhaps, giving a stranger a lift in his coach when his passengers were out of it?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.
‘Oh, not casual strangers, of course. But if there was another coach-driver in trouble, especially one of our lot or even a man working for another tour company, Cyril would do his best to help him out, I’m sure, provided it didn’t hold up the tour at all.’
‘What about Mr Daigh?’
‘Well, he was a different sort. Fond of his joke, but never nasty or embarrassing with it. Quite the gentleman in that sort of way, but – well, you know – liked his bit of fun.’
‘Gentlemanly enough to take a sick person to hospital, for example? Someone who was not on the tour, I mean.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t quite say that. The coaches are on a very tight schedule, you see. There wouldn’t be time for a driver to go off like that, although I’d say that, in the ordinary way, I’m sure Jack Daigh would do a good turn if he died for it.’
‘Which he may well have done,’ said Dame Beatrice, when she recounted to Laura the information she had received from the desk-clerks.
‘So what will you do now?’ asked Laura.
‘I shall return to Derbyshire and talk to the County police. I have no doubt that they will have searched the moors. The search must be unsuccessful, or we should have heard. I shall suggest a different hiding-place for poor Noone’s body. If my suggestion is well received and their search of my rather unlikely hiding-place is successful, then I shall convey the same suggestion to the police who are conducting the search for Daigh in Wales.’
‘But what is this long shot of yours?’
‘I prefer not to say until I know whether or not it has reached its target.’
‘And you do really think that these missing drivers have been murdered? But why?’
‘Why do I think so? – or why have they been murdered?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘I think so because you think so. Isn’t that right?’
‘Perhaps it is. It’s the fact that two are missing which bothers me.’
‘As for why they have been murdered, well, the temporary theft of the Welsh coach – if a theft can be held to be temporary – indicated a robbery of a more serious kind, I think.’
‘You mean our coach was commandeered to convey stolen goods?’ asked Honfleur incredulously when she made the suggestion to him.
‘It is a reasonable supposition, I think. I wonder why you think so?’
‘Oh, I don’t! I think you’re jumping to conclusions far too readily. What kind of stolen goods would need a coach to transport them?’
‘Thousands of cigarettes, cases of contraband liquor, a fortune in narcotics wrapped up in bales of textiles… or even an innocent-seeming suitcase.’
‘Oh, all right! But we’ve no details of such stolen cargoes, have we?’
‘We have not, but what about the police?’
‘The police? Well, so far as we are concerned, all they know at present is that two of our drivers are missing. That’s all I care about. In any case, your theories of theft and murder still have to be proved. How do you propose to set about it? Have you really any ideas?’
‘I shall go back to Derbyshire and talk with the Chief Constable of the district in which Driver Noone disappeared. If he will agree to do as I ask, one of my theories – well, not theories so much as wild guesses, I fear – will either be proved or disproved. If I am right, and we find Noone, then I know where to find Daigh.’
‘And it’s of no use to ask you any more questions?’
‘At present, no. I am probably going on a wild-goose chase and a ridiculous one at that, and if it weren’t for Laura I should not be undertaking it at all.’
‘I suggested it?’ exclaimed Laura.
‘No. You simply and quite unintentionally put a grotesque thought into my head.’
CHAPTER 6
Devil-Porter It No Further
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The Chief Constable of the district in which Hulliwell Hall was situated looked dubious.
‘But what makes you think so?’ he asked. ‘A body on a gatehouse roof? It seems such a fantastic idea.’
‘In Monmouth my secretary remarked on the fact that there appears to be no admission to the watchman’s lodging which forms part of the fourteenth century Monnow bridge.’
‘But Monmouth doesn’t come into the matter, except that County Coaches stay there one night on their Welsh tours, but their Welsh tours are nothing to do with us.’
‘After that, I discovered that, although there used to be a way in and out of the room at the top of the gatehouse to the bishop’s palace at Dantwylch, the passage between that and the ruins of the chapel has been bricked up for years.’
‘I still don’t follow. In any case, what have I to do with all that?’
‘Then I inspected the roof over the watchman’s dwelling on the Westgate at Winchester. The parapet there would conceal anybody who crouched or was lying down on the roof. This, all of it, made me think of the gatehouse which forms the entrance to your Hulliwell Hall.’
‘I think this is all rather far-fetched, you know, Dame Beatrice.’
‘You have searched the moors, you say.’
‘Exhaustively, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t dozens of hiding-places we could have missed. We’ve even had a helicopter out, but you can’t see into all the holes and crevices. There are stone-quarries, tumble-down drystone walls, disused sheep-pens, limestone caverns — any number of hiding-places and hazards. Besides, you’re going on the assumption that these men are dead. We don’t admit that. We shall continue to do our best to find them, of course, but, as we pointed out to the coach people when they made their first report, men do walk out of their own accord and are quite skilful at covering their tracks. Honestly, Dame Beatrice, don’t you think that is the case here?’
‘I might very well think so if only one coach-driver had been missing, but the disappearance of two of them within such a short space of time gives one food for thought.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose it does, but coincidences are not so very unusual and both men may have become tired of their jobs with the tour company, talked it over with one another and decided to quit.’
‘One in Derbyshire and one in West Wales?’
‘Well, two men roaming together would be more conspicuous than if each man went off on his own. We’ve circulated a description of Noone and the Welsh police, with whom we’re in contact, have done the same for Daigh. Now we and they have combined and issued both descriptions in case the men have teamed up somewhere or other. I don’t see what more we can do, except continue with routine enquiries.’