‘So how much of Honfleur’s story is true?’
‘It hardly matters. Now for Knight.’
‘How shall you tackle him?’
‘By telling him what I believe to be the truth and getting him to confirm it and to add such embellishments in his own defence as may seem good to him.’
Knight still wore a bandage round his neck. He did not seem in the least surprised to see them, although he looked a little suspiciously at their private-eye, the burly, ex-policeman escort.
‘You were expecting us?’ Dame Beatrice blandly enquired.
‘They’ve just ’phoned up from the office,’ Knight replied, ‘to say you were on your way. What can I do for you this time?’
‘Well, I venture to suggest that you tell me the truth, unless you prefer to have me tell it to you. May we sit down?’
‘Sure. How much do you know?’
‘Everything except your motive in killing Vittorio.’
‘Motive for that?’ He still kept a wary eye on the private detective who had taken a modest chair near the door. ‘I see you’ve got a dick with you.’
‘An unofficial one. He is not here to caution you or to inform you that you are not obliged to speak, but that, if you do, what you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.’
‘He isn’t a dick? You could have fooled me!’
‘He is an ex-policeman, a retired sergeant. He has no connection with the case of the murdered coach-drivers. An attempt was made upon my life a short time ago, so he is here merely in the capacity of bodyguard to an elderly and enfeebled old lady.’ She leered hideously at Knight, who said nervously,
‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’
‘Well, now, as my secretary would say, let’s get on with it, shall we?’
‘What do you expect me to say?’
‘Well, not quite what you said before. Let us forget this colourful story of an attack, a black man and a kidnapping.’
‘There was an attack.’ He unwound the bandage on his neck. ‘Take another look at that, if you don’t believe me.’
‘I accept the knife-wound on your neck. Let me replace the bandage. There! You had it from Vittorio, of whom you then got the better and killed.’
‘It was in self-defence.’
‘I accept that, too. Need you have killed him, though?’
‘Well, he killed my two mates, didn’t he?’
‘He may have done, but my deductions indicate that, although he was an accessory to those murders, his was not the hand which struck the lethal blows.’
‘Who did, then?’
‘Never mind that, for the moment. Let me hear your own narrative, please.’
‘All right, then, but, once again, how much do you know?’
‘Enough to check your veracity. Of that you may be sure.’
‘I’ve only your word for it.’
‘Quite.’
This agreeable concession appeared to disconcert Knight. To cover this, as well as to hide his not over-clean shirt, he moved across the room, picked up a tweed jacket from the back of a chair and put it on.
‘Stay sitting,’ said the ex-police sergeant. Knight returned to his place and looked apprehensively at Dame Beatrice.
‘Where do you want me to start?’ he asked. ‘But no taking things down in writing,’ he added quickly, ‘else I’m not talking.’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Dame Beatrice. ‘It will all come out in court, I daresay.’
‘In court?’
‘Of course. What you have to decide is whether you prefer to be tried for a killing in self-defence or for wilful murder.’
Knight half-rose. The impassive guardian at the door followed suit. Then both men resumed their seats, Knight with a half-inaudible expletive which he quickly smothered.
‘It won’t help me if I tell the truth,’ he muttered. ‘You can’t get the better of the cops. It’s like the income tax. They got the whip-hand of you the whole bloody time. All right, I better out with it, but I don’t call it murder, mind you. I done Vittorio because I thought he done my mates. If it wasn’t him, who was it?’
‘Mr Honfleur, alias Carstairs.’
‘Him? But he was in my push in the war!’
‘Yes, I suppose he was in a Commando unit, as you told me you were. Both of you have turned your knowledge to a use which was never intended by those who trained you.’
‘What’s the difference between knifing Jerry sentries and knifing a dirty, thieving, double-crossing, blackmailing little wog?’
‘In law and in time of peace the difference is substantial, but let us have your story.’
‘Damn it all, why should I?’
Dame Beatrice shrugged her thin shoulders.
‘In order to obtain, through me, the best defending counsel in England or Scotland,’ she replied, ‘so stop wasting my time. Tell me, first of all, what you know about the trade in stolen antiques.’
‘None of us knew much about that,’ said Knight, reassured by what appeared to be a change of subject. ‘I reckon we all thought some sort of fiddle was going on, but it was no business of ours and everybody fiddles nowadays – you got to – so what?’
‘Some sort of fiddle, as you call it, in this case refers to a series of well-organised and very remunerative thefts which the police have been following up for months. The valuables were stolen by the knowledgeable Vittorio and disposed of through the County Motors coach organisation. Unfortunately for themselves, Noone and Daigh became involved (accidentally, I’m sure) then perhaps they refused to co-operate; anyway, they were liquidated, one in Derbyshire, the other in West Wales. Your board of directors called me in to investigate. My secretary and I found the bodies, as you probably know.’
Knight was silent. Dame Beatrice waited, her sharp black eyes on her victim. Laura tried to read the titles of the books and paperbacks in a small glass-fronted bookcase on the wall opposite to where she was sitting. The bodyguard studied an evil-eyed stuffed seagull in a glass case.
‘Look,’ said Knight at last, ‘this wog. Do you mean it wasn’t him that done Noone and Daigh? They were stabbed, so it said in the papers, and Eye-ties are reckoned to be handy with a knife.’
‘So are Commando troops,’ Dame Beatrice reminded him. ‘The man who broke into my home was carrying a Commando knife. He dropped it in his flight.’
‘So who do you reckon that was?’
‘I know who it could not have been. It could not have been Vittorio, for he was already dead, and by your hand.’
‘No, but he could have stabbed my two mates. He wasn’t dead then.’
‘Tell me, Mr Knight, if you had been on a tour (as driver of it, I mean) and Vittorio had asked you to move your coach while your passengers were sight-seeing, would you have obliged him?’
‘No, nor a dozen like him.’
‘Suppose another coach-driver had made the same request?’
Knight looked dubious. He had a long, melancholy face. This, and the bandage round his neck, gave him the lugubrious expression of a captive bird of prey.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it was one of our own chaps and he wanted a bit of help I suppose I’d oblige if I could, but it couldn’t be like that, you see, because we never only send the one coach at a time to any particular hotel or place, so the answer’s a lemon.’
‘You would not help the driver of another coach company, then?’
‘Why should I? They got their own headquarters to ’phone up to if they find their selves in trouble.’
‘Yet it seems certain that Noone and Daigh did move their coaches and, from what you have just told me, they must have been obeying an order or request from somebody they could scarcely refuse.’
‘That ’ud be Mr Honfleur. None of us wouldn’t do it for nobody else. We’d know it was all right, coming from him, because we’d know he’d take full responsibility.’
‘Thank you, Mr Knight. That is my own theory. Now let me tell you the true story of how you came to kill Vittorio.’