‘You do think Vittorio was young Wullie’s black man, don’t you?’
‘I will not commit myself as to that, but it is possible, as perhaps I have already indicated.’
Back at the hotel Dame Beatrice asked for an interview with the manager.
‘Did Mr Carstairs, from one of those bungalows on the hillside above the hotel, ever come in here for a meal or to drink at the bar?’ she asked.
‘Carstairs? I wouldn’t know him,’ the manager replied.
‘Did Driver Knight always bring the County Motors coach here?’
‘Only once before, I believe. Two men called Ford and Dibbens alternated with the tour.’
‘Will you describe Knight as closely as ever you can? It may be vitally important.’
CHAPTER 10
The Bungalow
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Describe him?’ The manager looked dubious. ‘My dining-room staff would be better at that than I would. We get coaches all the time during the summer and unless the drivers have any complaints, which is very seldom indeed at my hotel, I don’t really see anything of them. They’re civil, unobtrusive lads as a rule and they don’t bring themselves much to my notice. Why not have a wee word with my head waiter?’
The head waiter was Swiss. Like most of his calling, he had a good command of English and he readily consented to describe Knight.
‘This driver was taller than myself. I am metres one point seven. I think maybe he would be seven centimetres taller.’
‘Two and a half to three inches taller than yourself, and you measure roughly five feet seven. I see. What kind of build has he?’
‘Build? His body? Not fat.’
‘Noticeably broad-shouldered, powerful?’
‘Oh, no, not that; just ordinary. He had brown hair, a little grey on the temples and cut short, not the modern fashion.’
‘Was he clean-shaven?’
‘Oh, yes, there was no moustache or beard.’
‘What kind of man was he?’
‘Jocund, always with a smile.’
‘Did you like him?’
The Swiss shrugged his shoulders.
‘What does your Shakespeare say?’ he asked rhetorically. Dame Beatrice cackled.
‘Was he a smiling villain?’ she said, ‘or are you referring to Julius Caesar’s preference for fat men?’
The head waiter merely shrugged his expressive shoulders again.
‘He had been here only once before,’ he said, as though this unhelpful remark was an answer to her question.
‘He was in your dining room on the first night the party stayed here?’
‘Making himself very agreeable to the ladies, yes.’
‘And you saw him at dinner the evening the party returned from Skye?’
‘Certainly I did. The people at his table invited him to a glass of wine and I myself took their order, so I know he was there.’
‘He did not take coffee in the lounge that evening, I am told.’
‘I do not know about that. He had to look over the coach, perhaps.’
‘Would anybody on the staff know whether he took the coach out after dinner, I wonder?’
The head waiter did not know, but he thought not. However, he went off to make enquiries and returned shortly to say that nobody believed that the coach had been moved that night.
‘Nothing to show that it couldn’t have been moved after dark, though, and brought back before morning,’ said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were alone. ‘I mean, something happened that night, otherwise Knight would not have disappeared. I’m beginning to wonder more and more whether he is the nigger in our woodpile. You don’t think, failing any gatehouses in the immediate neighbour-hood, that the murderers did a Young Hunting on him, do you?’
‘Your cryptic reference eludes me.’
‘The Border ballad, you know:
The deepest pot in Clyde Water
They got Young Hunting in,
With a green turf tied across his breast
To keep that good lord down.
‘That’s all I meant. I don’t suppose it would be past somebody’s ingenuity to stab the man the way Noone and Daigh were stabbed, take him by night to White’s boatyard, commandeer a boat and take the body down the loch towards Oban and drop it overboard. If it was weighted down, it could lie on the bed of the loch till Doomsday and nobody except the murderer would know it was there.’
‘You may be right.’
‘Things do go in threes, you know.’
‘I still think we were brought up here to get us away from those areas in Derbyshire and Pembrokeshire where our enquiries were beginning to prove embarrassing to somebody.’
‘But if you thought that, why did you come?’
‘To allay suspicion.’
‘Whose?’
‘Ah, yes, whose?’
‘Well, what’s the next move?’
‘I think I should like to find out for certain whether the head waiter’s Mr Knight is Mrs White’s Mr Carstairs.’
‘I thought you’d made up your mind that they are two different men.’
‘I should wish to be sure. We now have an unbiased description of Knight from the headwaiter. He does not know Carstairs. Mrs White, we assume, does not know Knight, so a comparison of height and the general appearance of the two men may be of interest.’
‘And if the descriptions don’t tally, as you believe they won’t?’
‘Then I may be impelled to accept your Young Hunting theory.’
‘You’ll never find the body if they have dumped it in Loch Linnhe. Once past Sallachan Point, goodness knows how deep it is out in the middle. It’s ten fathoms through the Narrows and then the marine contour lines pretty well follow the line of the shore. If they did weight the body…’
‘We are assuming that there is a body, you know. Do you care to accompany me to Mrs White’s again?’
They mounted the slope. This time a youthful maidservant answered the door. Dame Beatrice produced a card.
‘Please to come ben,’ said the girl. She admitted them and left them in the narrow entrance hall while she went to show the card to her mistress. Mrs White received them effusively.
‘I did not know I would have the pleasure again, Dame Beatrice,’ she said. ‘My husband is at work, of course. He will be sorry to have missed you. Is there any more news?’
‘There seems to be a discrepancy,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘We have received two descriptions of the man for whom we are enquiring. Of course, neither may be correct, but it would help our enquiry if you will give us your own description of Mr Carstairs.’
‘I had very little to do with him, you know. He was here today, gone tomorrow – that kind of thing. That is why we thought he might be a commercial traveller, or perhaps be going around to sell his pictures.’
‘Was he tall, short, fat, thin, dark, fair?’
‘Oh, you just want that kind of description. I should call him about medium, taking him all round, I suppose. He was on the sturdy side and had brown hair. I don’t know what colour his eyes were, but I expect they were either brown or grey. He was taller than me, but not as tall as my husband. Mr White is five feet ten.’
‘Did you ever see your husband and Mr Carstairs standing together?’
‘No, I don’t think so, but I’m sure Mr Carstairs wasn’t as tall.’
‘And he was a sturdy type of man? – broad-shouldered, noticeably strongly built?’
‘No, just ordinary I think. Oh, I don’t know, though. Come to think, he had very broad shoulders and I believe he must have been very strong because once’ – she giggled in a girlishly repellent fashion – ‘I had a garment blow off my line of washing and go sailing over the back fence, so, instead of going all the way round, I decided to climb the fence to get it back and my foot got stuck between the railings. Well, I knew Mr Carstairs was at home, so I yelled and shouted and he came out and reached up and lifted me straight into the air to release my shoe – and I weigh all of eleven and a half stone, you know.’