‘Very self-sacrificing, and your only reward was to get knocked on the head, I am told; and your neck, I see, is bandaged. But please begin at the beginning. I have had an account of the tour from a passenger, but your own story will be a great deal more valuable, as you seem to have been the victim of a most unpleasant and, I daresay, alarming experience.’
‘You want me to start…’
‘From the time your coach moved off from the depot, if you will be so good.’
‘I see the young lady is taking notes.’
‘She will read them back to you later on, if you wish.’
‘Like a bloomin’ police station, isn’t it? Oh, well, I’ve got nothing to hide. I reported for duty as usual on the Saturday morning and I’m told it’s the Skye tour as I’m to take on. I wasn’t too keen, having done Scotland previous only as far as Edinburgh except once, and then a different schedule – the Trossachs and that – but I’d said I’d muck in, whatever Mr Honfleur wanted me to do, so I showed willing, as they say, and we got the luggage stowed and the first few passengers aboard and off we went, only about eight minutes behind time. Wouldn’t have been that, only two people coming by car were involved in a collision and had to come on by taxi. A bit shaken up they were, too, and not at all sure whether they wanted to make the tour or not, but our inspector cheered them up and they came. Silly not to, when they’d paid their money.
‘Well, I picked up a couple of people here and another one or two there, along the route, you know, but the main lot joined us in Canonbury. That bus station needs enlarging or else to be taken right out of the town. Still, that’s by the way and just my usual bit of bellyache.
‘We made the lunch stop all right and later on I allowed twenty minutes for tea. I got the coach in at six for dinner and the night. No problems; passengers a quiet lot, coach running sweet, everybody happy.’
‘Where was that first overnight stop?’
‘Where was our first overnight stop? Oh, in Yorkshire at Harrogate. One of our favourite hotels. Very popular with the coach parties because not only is it well situated – close to the park and all that – but the accommodation and food are very high-class, and a lot of camera-clicking goes on because the coach is always met by a chap dressed in the old horse-coach rig-out and he blows a coach-horn to welcome the visitors. We only stayed there the one night, and then we went on to Edinburgh by way of Newcastle and Carter Bar and, the old bus running like a song, we fetched up in fine weather at the overnight stop at just after six. Everybody pleased with the hotel, Princes Street crowded and the traffic nonstop as usual, and then we set off in the rain next morning, and me with no experience of the route once we’d crossed the Forth Bridge.’
‘But you had been to Saighdearan once before and you were able to give two of your party the names of the mountains they saw when the coach stopped for lunch on the shores of, I think, Loch Earn.’
‘Oh, Lord, yes, I forgot my first trip that way. Anyhow, I’d done my homework the night before. Always reckon to do that, you know. Never like to plead ignorant. Matter of professional pride, I suppose. Anything more you want to know about the trip?’
He sounded jaunty and cocksure, but Dame Beatrice knew that he was uneasy and that his further account of the tour might be only partly true.
‘Nothing more about the tour,’ she said, ‘but I should like as clear and as detailed a description as possible of what happened after the party had returned from the day’s outing to Skye.’
‘Oh, ah, Skye. We had to wait a bit at Kyle of Lochalsh for the bigger boat to take the coach, you know. The trip passed off all right, although people would have liked to see a lot more of Skye than we had time for, and then—’
‘When you got back you were attacked?’
‘Yes, that was all of a rum go, that was. I thought my number was up, and that’s a fact. Third time unlucky, I guessed.’
‘Third time?’
‘Well, Noone and Daigh, you know. Both copped it, didn’t they? So when these two blokes broke into my bedroom just as I’d settled down to bone up on the next day’s run from Fort William to Perth, I reckoned I’d had it, just like the other two.’
‘Can you describe the men?’
‘Not really. They had nylon stockings over their heads. One I reckon was a spade.’
‘A black man?’
‘That’s right. They both were wearing gloves, but I caught a sight of a bit of bare brown wrist while they were gagging me and tying me up.’
‘Did you have no chance to raise the alarm?’
‘No chance at all. They come busting in and were on me and the gag in my mouth before I could let out a single, solitary yip.’
‘Were you fully dressed?’
‘What’s that got to do with it? Matter of fact, I was in trousers and shirt and my dressing-gown.’
‘Had you left your bedroom door open?’
‘No, of course not. One of them must have been on the staff of the hotel, I reckon, because he must have had a master-key to the rooms.’
‘Could you not have called out while they were stripping off your dressing-gown?’
‘Stripping off my dressing-gown? Look here, madam, what are you getting at?’
‘Oh, I took it for granted that they would have seen to it that you were fully dressed when they spirited you away. Tell me about that.’
‘I want to know what my dressing-gown has to do with it.’
‘I have told you.’
‘You haven’t the right to question me like this. All I’ve got to say I’ve said to the police.’
‘Very well. By the way, are you preparing to ask for compensation?’
‘Compensation?’
‘I have no authority to make promises on behalf of County Motors, of course, but it seems, from your story (and I do hope you will be good enough to continue it), that you have suffered physical injury and, I assume, unlawful captivity while employed upon the Company’s business.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, Mr Honfleur is a decent chap, so he’ll see I get my rights. As for unlawful captivity, well, you can say that again. They sat there in the room, me trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven excepting that I’d still got my guts inside me, although my heart, I don’t mind telling you, was just about in my boots, and then, when it was dark, which comes latish, as you may have noticed, as far north as that, they forced me, at knife-point, to get down the stairs and out into the open.’
‘So they had not tied your legs?’
‘They did, until they were ready for us to leave. Then this darkie pulled out a dirty great flick-knife and stood behind me and reached round and put it at my throat while the other chap untied my legs and told me to get moving. I had a shot at grabbing the darkie’s wrist and got his nasty snick on my neck.’
‘Your bedroom was in the three-storey wing, then.’
‘Yes, right at the top. I don’t think any of my passengers were near me. I believe they were all on the ground floor in the bungalow part of the building. Still, even if any of them had been handy, I wouldn’t have cared to risk a shout.’
‘And, in any case, you were gagged, you say. So you emerged into the front yard of the hotel. What happened then?’
‘They forced me into a car and drove me a few hundred yards down the road in the direction of Fort William. They took me into a big, empty house which looked about ready to fall down and kept me there.’
‘And, later, released you.’
‘That’s right, in a sense, I suppose.’
‘Did they feed you?’
‘Yes, with sandwiches from the lorry-drivers’ caff down the road and tea out of a thermos.’
‘What demands did they make?’
‘Demands? Nothing, except to tell them the exact route the coaches take to get back home from Perth. Well, there was no secret about that, so I told them. When I’d done and had answered several questions about the hotels we were accustomed to stop at, the nig hit me over the head and the next thing I knew I was walking into Mr Honfleur’s office here.’