‘In November we issue a leaflet setting out what we expect to do during the following year. About mid-December we follow this up with a glossy, colourful brochure with photographs, little route-maps, full details of all tours, prices, insurance cover, hotels, luncheon stops, special attractions and so on. These brochures can be picked up at any of our booking offices and we also send one to every passenger who has ever travelled with us over the last five years or so.’
‘Really? You have a regular clientèle, then?’
‘Oh, rather! People travel with us year after year. Some of them book again – provisionally, of course – almost as soon as they get back. There’s terrific competition for the front seats, as you’d expect. Of course, we have a great deal to offer. If they did the tours privately, using the same lunch-stops and hotels as we do, it could cost them twice as much as they pay us. On our very popular nine-day tours, for example, which go out on the Saturday morning and return in the evening of the Sunday week, we reckon to put the coach up at two four-star hotels and the other hotels are usually three-star or, out in the wilds, the very best we can get.’
‘So you receive no complaints from your passengers.’
Basil Honfleur laughed.
‘Of course we get complaints, and we investigate every one. After all, our whole concern rests upon good-will and satisfaction. Sometimes the same complaint comes from several sources. In that case, as often as not, we remove that particular hotel from our list. Usually we find, though, that solitary individual complaints are not justified. There are people who make a hobby of complaining. Most of them write to the newspapers or the BBC, some write to their MP and some write to us. They don’t seem happy unless they’re nursing some fancied grievance. However, they are the exceptions so far as our passengers are concerned and as they usually travel with us only the once, we’re not too terribly concerned with them. Of course, as I said, we do investigate every complaint we receive, just in case there’s something in it, but there very seldom is.’
‘And what kind of people travel with you more than once?’
‘Our passengers are mostly middle-aged and elderly, and there’s a preponderance of women – lonely spinsters, you know, or a couple of widows travelling together for company. We get more married couples than we used to, though. It means that Dad can have a chance to admire the scenery and take his ease on holiday, instead of being tied to the driver’s seat of the family car and having to keep his eyes on the road.’
‘Yes, I can appreciate that.’
‘At one time the people who booked with us liked travelling but had no car. That is far from being the case today. Years ago, too, the kind who took coach tours had never previously been inside a hotel. That certainly is not true today. You hear them discussing holidays in Greece and Yugoslavia, not to mention Italy and the Costa Brava. They’re not poor, our present-day clients. You should see what they buy in the way of souvenirs and presents. How the devil they get all the stuff home I sometimes wonder. You find, too, that a number of them have already had a holiday on the Continent that very same summer. They tell us they like to take one of our tours ‘to unwind’. Times have changed with a vengeance! Instead of saving up for a rainy day they reckon the Welfare State will provide the umbrella for that, so the slogan is: You can’t take it with you. And, of course, their children are in good jobs, so they don’t need any future provision made for them. Add the bogeyman Inflation, and you can’t blame them for their attitude. I wonder, though, how much longer it can last.’
‘However, while it does last, your company is not ungrateful.’
‘Well, hang it all, our passengers get their money’s worth, and they know it. Of course, they’d do things a lot cheaper in a caravan or at a holiday camp, but they prefer to travel in our coaches. After all, it’s a grand way to see the country, even if you can’t choose your stopping-places. Then, something which appeals very much to the women, all the meals are laid on and there’s no washing up to do.’
‘The meals? Ah, yes, a most important part of any holiday.’
‘Also, there are no problems for them with regard to their luggage. Once it’s on the coach we handle it for them everywhere they stay. Apart from putting it outside their bedroom doors so that we can collect it while they’re at breakfast each morning, they don’t have to tote it about at all, and that’s a big concession to elderly people.’
‘And the meals?’
‘Oh, we get very few complaints about those. We used also to provide early tea and daily and Sunday newspapers free of charge, but most hotels haven’t the staff nowadays to take round early tea, so they put a contraption in each room so that people can make their own. We discontinued newspapers because of the cost, and the same goes for afternoon teas.’
‘No afternoon teas? That must have caused some heart-burning.’
‘Oh, the driver always pulls up at some suitable place at some time between four o’clock and five, so that those who can’t do without their cuppa can get one. The only difference is that it isn’t included nowadays in the fare. We do include after-lunch and after-dinner coffee, though. We always ask to have it served in the lounge. It makes a social occasion of it, you see, with general conversation. Helps people to get together and sort themselves out.’
‘And do people object to paying extra for their teas? Would they be inclined to reproach the driver?’
‘I’ve never heard of that. From our point of view, you know, the teas were a waste of money, particularly in Scotland and the West Country. When people have eaten bread, butter and jam, baps, scones and cakes, or Cornish pasties and perhaps stewed fruit and clotted cream at tea-time, many of them are not hungry enough to do justice to a three- or four-course dinner, especially when they’ve had a cooked breakfast and a three-course lunch as well as their tea.’
‘How are the halts for tea-time organised?’
‘They’re not. It’s up to the driver to pick out suitable stopping-places.’
‘That seems to lay an unreasonable burden on them, does it not?’
‘Well, I admit they don’t like it much. The easiest stops nowadays are on the motorways, of course, but we don’t use those more than we can help because it means such monotonous travel. In remote districts, though, it’s sometimes very difficult to find a suitable café at about the right time of day, and then perhaps the driver does come in for some criticism.’
‘Would that be sufficient to cause disaffection among your drivers?’
‘Enough to make them pack in the job and beetle off without giving notice, do you mean? Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d do that. After all, if they don’t like the conditions, they have only to say so and go back to the buses. There would be no need to disappear off the face of the earth as these two fellows seem to have done.’
‘It really does seem curious, but how do I come into the affair?’
‘Well, the board of directors seem to think they’d like you to make your own enquiries without reference to what the police may or may not intend to do.’
‘Their resources are very much greater than mine, you know.’
‘I pointed that out and said I didn’t see what you could do.’
‘Would you asperse me and my efforts?’
‘No, of course not. As my chairman pointed out, the police are not really interested, so their enquiries will be a matter of routine, not of urgency.’
‘Have you yourself formed any theory which might account for your men’s disappearance?’
‘Not unless they’ve both had domestic troubles. We’ve contacted passengers and so have the police, but there isn’t a clue. Nothing has gone wrong on any of our tours, so far as we know. These two drivers simply disappeared and haven’t been seen since. I cannot understand it. I’ll tell you something, though, which convinces my chairman that there’s some kind of mystery afoot. In Pembrokeshire we mislaid a coach as well as its driver. It reappeared, but miles from where the driver should have left it. We found it abandoned in Swansea.’