‘Was Knight’s room searched?’
‘Oh, yes, when he didn’t turn up, and that was the queerest thing of all. One or two of our men went along with the chambermaid to find out whether he’d been taken ill, but the room was empty and his bed was untouched.’
‘What about his suitcase?’
‘His suitcase? I’ve no idea. Nobody mentioned that, and it didn’t occur to me to ask. Well, in the end, another driver turned up – I suppose the hotel manager telephoned for him. He came from Edinburgh. We were taken to Perth, which was our next overnight stop, but there was no coffee-break and a very late lunch that day, and everybody was wondering what had happened to Mr Knight. There were some nasty rumours because, of course, most people had read about the other driver.’
Dame Beatrice did not mention that the last word could now be put in the plural. All she said was:
‘And that was the end of the matter, so far as you were concerned?’
‘Well, yes. I mean, there was nothing we could do, was there? We got home all right, because they sent another driver up from County Coaches for us, but it wasn’t the same happy party. The driver was a very taciturn man and, anyway, losing Mr Knight like that quite spoilt the holiday, although, of course, it did give us something to talk about for the rest of the trip.’
‘Oh, yes? What sort of things were mentioned?’
‘Well, as I said, people remembered that, about a month before, another driver had disappeared and had been found murdered in Derbyshire. I knew nothing about that at the time, because Ian and I had been visiting our married daughter in Spain, where she and her husband had rented a flat for a month, and we didn’t get the English papers there, but there was a lot of talk after we got back, apart from all the gossip on the coach.’
‘I see.’ Dame Beatrice still did not reveal that another driver had been found murdered, this time in Wales, for that bit of news had not leaked to the press and so was not public property. ‘The two cases are not analogous, though.’
‘Not?’
‘No. In the Derbyshire affair the driver disappeared at mid-day while his passengers were inspecting a stately home.’
‘I don’t see that it makes any difference.’
‘And his coach had been moved a few yards from the spot on which he left it. Of course, it may have been moved merely to accommodate another vehicle. I wonder whether your coach had been moved during the night?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Perhaps the people at the hotel can tell me.’
‘Oh, are you going up there?’
‘As I am being retained by the Company to watch their interests, I think I should see the conditions for myself. By the way, Mrs Grant, did Driver Knight make any mention of the fact that he had returned recently from sick leave?’
‘Not so far as I know. He must have made a good recovery. I never saw a healthier-looking man.’
The hamlet – although it was scarcely large enough to merit even that description – was called Saighdearan. Apart from the hotel, it consisted of an ugly, raw-looking motel a couple of hundred yards further along the road to Fort William, a lorry-drivers café and half-a-dozen cottages put up by a speculative builder for holiday letting. There were also a couple of owner-occupied bungalows on a slope above the hotel and there was a large house further along the loch-side, but it had fallen into ruins and was unoccupied.
A busy road ran between the hotel and the steep-sided banks of the loch. There was a grey, stony shore, muddy and uninviting, but on the further side the mountains were reflected in the water and the reflections were calm, clear and beautiful.
Laura had booked in by telephone and as soon as they had tidied up after the drive from Carlisle, where they had spent the night, Dame Beatrice made no secret of her errand to the hotel manager, a massive, bearded man wearing a tweed jacket and a beautiful kilt in the tartan of MacDonald of Clanranald.
‘That?’ he said. ‘Yes, a very strange business, to be sure. So you are here on behalf of County Tours, whose driver he was. Well, there’s little I can tell you. The police have all the information I can give.’
‘I am wondering whether you have any theories which perhaps you have not imparted to the police.’
‘No, no, I am not one to indulge in speculation. From what I heard, this is not the first case of its kind.’
‘That is what makes it so serious.’
‘Aye, right enough. Well, I’ll recapitulate for your benefit, but there’s nothing I can tell you that you will not know already.’
He proceeded to give an account which tallied in all respects with that which she had had already from Mrs Grant, except that the missing man’s suitcase, neatly packed, was still in the hotel.
‘I suppose Knight did not have any visitors from outside while the party was here?’ she asked. ‘I note that your lounge bar and your dining-room are open to non-residents.’
‘He had no visitors. The coach arrived on the first evening at six, dinner was at seven and he sat at table with three of the passengers. On the following morning the coach left at nine to go over to Skye and he dined that night with some of the other passengers. I always take a look round the dining-room to make sure all is well and everybody is happy, so I am sure he was there. He appeared to be making himself very agreeable to the ladies, as was his custom.’
‘And that, I assume, is the last you saw of him. I understand he did not take coffee that evening.’
‘Aye, that’s true.’
‘You did not see him go to his room?’
‘Nobody saw him. He would likely have taken the covered way from the dining-room without going through the lounge.’
‘I suppose you did not hear a car come into your front parking-space that night? The space you keep for casual visitors?’
‘There would be cars coming and going up to the end of the licensing hours, of course, and, far into the night, there would be cars going by on the road.’
‘Oh, of course. How many exits are there to the hotel?’
‘There will be four, including the one from the hotel shop. There is another at the hotel entrance by the reception desk, another opposite the shop on the corridor which leads to the ground-floor bedrooms, and one more at the foot of the stairs up to the three-storey wing where Knight had his room. He could have slipped away easily enough without anybody being the wiser, so long as he bided his time and watched that nobody was about, but why should he want to slip away? He wasn’t owing me money.’
‘So there doesn’t seem to be a lead anywhere,’ said Laura, when they were discussing the affair in Dame Beatrice’s room after dinner that evening. ‘What’s the next move? Do we look for another dead body, do you suppose? I’m getting morbid about this business.’
‘The manager has consented to my questioning the hotel staff, although he assures me – and I have a feeling he is right – that they can tell me nothing which they have not already told the police.’
‘Is it worth while to bother them, then?’
‘I think, for my own satisfaction, it must be done.’
‘I could do a bit of rubber-necking round the village, if that would be of any help. You’d have to tell me what you want me to say, though.’
‘ “That shall be tomorrow, not tonight.” ’
‘ “I must bury sorrow out of sight,” ’ capped Laura, grinning. ‘Browning could be as banal as Shakespeare when he liked, couldn’t he?’
‘Heresy of the deepest dye!’
‘About Shakespeare? What price some of those ghastly rhyming couplets at the end of the scenes in Macbeth, to name but one play?’
‘Curtain lines on an uncurtained stage? I am not well-informed on the subject of the Elizabethan theatre.’
‘Be that as it may, I’ll say good-night, then, before I become tediously informative. What time breakfast?’