Noonday and Night (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  There was a glimpse of Ben Nevis after the car had left Fort William on the following morning, but nothing like the magnificent view of it which they could obtain on their return journey, as Laura knew. They met holiday traffic on their way to Spean Bridge, but after that they were fortunate. The glorious road to Kyle of Lochalsh was almost free of traffic and there was only a short wait at the ferry before Laura drove on to the boat for the very short crossing to Kyleakin.

  Once clear of the village, the road up to Portree was comparatively dull after the amazingly lovely scenery of the mainland. However, Skye itself exercised its own magic and Laura, taking the coast road, found herself singing as they passed through Sligachan and headed north for their destination.

  The post office at Portree seemed the obvious place in which to make enquiries and here the information Laura asked for was readily obtained. The town was small and compact, and, following the directions, she and Dame Beatrice experienced no difficulty in finding McFee’s shop.

  It turned out to be, primarily, an ironmonger’s, but there were also picture postcards and small souvenirs of a kind likely to attract tourists, besides a collection of very ornamental kilt-pins and à sgin dhu in a glass case which immediately attracted Laura’s attention.

  The shopkeeper—McFee’s wife, the callers assumed—saw her looking at it and told her that, according to legend, it had belonged to one of Prince Charles Edward’s followers who had left it to a McFee when he crossed with the prince to Raasay. She and Laura got into conversation and it was a short step from this to a mention of the Fort William boatyard and MacGregor White.

  “My man will be back,” said Mrs. McFee, “to his dinner. Hae ye supped?”

  “Booked lunch at the hotel,” said Laura. “Did your husband ever mention a foreigner who booked a boat from Mr. White’s yard about a week ago?”

  “What way would he be mentioning that?” Mrs. McFee enquired.

  “Because the police are after the man and we’re hoping that Mr. McFee may be able to tell us where he went. I suppose he returned the boat?”

  “That’s no business of mine.” The woman, who had been friendliness itself up to this point, looked suspiciously at Laura. “You’ll be a police-woman?” she asked.

  “No, but a man has been murdered and we are acting on behalf of the tour company which employed him.”

  “You’re no’ the police?”

  “No, but we are working in close collaboration with them. Is your husband likely to be long?”

  “Och, no. It’s gone noon. He’ll be here soon enough. I’ll get you a chair.”

  “We’d rather look round the shop,” said Laura. Dame Beatrice, who had left them during the exchanges, came to the proprietress with a Highland brooch which, when she had paid for it, she pinned to the lapel of her tweed jacket. Laura also decided to make one or two small purchases and, as she was being given her change, a stocky man came into the shop and handed Mrs. McFee a parcel.

  “I got it from McLeod,” he said. “It’s a fush.”

  “The ladies wish to speak with you, Jock.”

  “Och, aye.” He did not seem in the least surprised. Laura took it that this was his accustomed reaction to any news, good or bad. She herself, however, was surprised by Dame Beatrice’s question to him.

  “Would you have any idea,” she said, “how long Mr. Carstairs has been away?”

  “Carstairs?”

  “And whether he is married?”

  “Now how would I ken that?”

  “Because you are a sociable, gregarious man who likes to get to know the neighbours. I think you lived in your employer’s bungalow in Saighdearan while you were working down at Mr. White’s boatyard in Fort William. Mr. White seems to be a taciturn, unfriendly man and his wife has, I would think, the English suburban determination to keep herself to herself, but you are from…”

  “Kirkintilloch. Aye, White will be what I call a Black Highlander. You’re right enough there. But you were speaking of Carstairs. He isna married—that is, I never saw a wife. He took on yon wee house in Saighdearan maybe two years ago and he runs a big green car, a Wolseley. I dinna ken what might be his business, but it was seldom he stayed in Saighdearan, so at my guess he travelled in some kind of goods, but he was not a man you could question.”

  “We were told he was an artist.”

  “Och, weel noo, he micht be juist that same.”

  “Did he ever hire a boat?”

  “No’ to my knowledge.”

  “Was he an Englishman?”

  “Aye.”

  “How long is it since you gave up your summer employment with Mr. White?”

  “Last Saturday.”

  “Was Mr. Carstairs at Saighdearan when you left?”

  “He wisna, but he had been there, on and off, for the past year.”

  “On and off?”

  “Aye. Times he would be there, but most times not. But what way are you speiring at me wi’ all this?”

  “Because I represent the Home Office and am working with the police. We think Mr. Carstairs may be able to help our enquiries into a case of murder—double murder.”

  “Losh! Ye dinna say!”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”

  “I dinna ken. He was a pleasant enough wee man.”

  “You mean he was a small man?”

  “Five foot seven at the most, but awfu’ strong in the arms and shoulders. He telt me once that his hobby was lifting weights, barbells, ye ken, and the like. Aye, and his press-ups! Ye’d think the man would drop dead of heart-failure.”

  “Did you ever see him in conversation with a dark-skinned man, a foreigner?”

  “No’ to my recollection. It’s little I saw of him at all.”

  “Did you, by any chance, hire out a boat to a foreigner, possibly an Italian, recently?”

  “A wee, wee man awfu’ like a monkey? He spoke to White, no’ to me. But it wisna for a boat. He had his own cruiser. It was about a fault in the engine, but White couldna help him.”

  “Did you see the County Motors coach come in last week?”

  “I did not. I was down at the boatyard with Mr. White until eight o’ the clock.”

  “You know that, after the trip over here and after the coach-party had lunched at the hotel and looked at the shops, the coach-driver disappeared?”

  “Aye, so I heard.”

  “Did you set eyes on him at all before he went?”

  “I did not. They would have been back from Skye before I left the boatyard and come the morn he was awa’, or so it was telt me.”

  Laura drove Dame Beatrice back to Saighdearan. The late afternoon turned misty and a penetrating rain began to fall, so that the windscreen wipers were busy all the way from Kyle of Lochalsh to Saighdearan and the views, including that of Ben Nevis, were lost in impenetrable haze.

  Laura spoke little during the journey. For one thing, she needed all her concentration to look out for the headlights of on-coming cars and to keep her own vehicle safely on the road; for another, although she was burning with curiosity, she thought it better to ask no questions, although she felt sure that she knew in what direction Dame Beatrice’s thoughts had travelled during the interview with McFee. Just as they left Fort William, however, Dame Beatrice spoke.

  “So we have to find out whether Carstairs and Knight are one and the same man,” she said.

  “Do you think that’s likely?”

  “I think it is most unlikely. Knight would hardly bring a coach to a place where he was already known as Carstairs.”

  “It depends upon whether the manager of the hotel knows him as Carstairs, doesn’t it? If Carstairs never patronised the hotel under that name, the manager wouldn’t recognise him as Knight. I looked out of Mrs. White’s window, at her suggestion, when I visited her and I wouldn’t guarantee to recognise anybody who got down from the coach, so she need not have made the connection.”

  “We had better find out whether Cars
tairs ever visited the hotel. If he did, he certainly cannot be Knight.”

  “We’re suspicious of Knight, it seems. Why should we be?”

  “A precautionary attitude only. He may be as innocent (and as dead) as Noone and Daigh. On the other hand, he may be their murderer. His ‘illness’ is a suspicious circumstance in itself. If he is a guilty man he might find it convenient to ‘disappear’ in order to lead us to assume that he, too, had been murdered.”

  “Why would he want us to assume that?”

  “If he is the murderer or an accomplice it might be to his advantage that the police should waste valuable time in looking for him in the wrong place. Noone was murdered near Hulliwell Hall and his body found there. This finding of the body was not part of the murderers’ plan and must have given them food for thought. Then it must be known by now that Daigh’s body also has been found, again in the place where he was last known to be alive. The criminals had to make a hasty revision of their plans, I think, for they had counted upon a long period of search and doubt, with perhaps no police activity at all if it were taken for granted that the drivers had disappeared voluntarily.”

  “So the situation, as they saw it once the bodies were found, demanded a third disappearance which might indicate a third murder, you think, and while the police who, because of the discovery of the bodies, are now hot-foot on the trail, go chasing around Saighdearan and Fort William, the murderers are sitting pretty in some quite other place. Where, do you suppose?”

  “I think we must leave that to the police to find out. There is little we can do about the matter now, except to suggest that they get on the track of Carstairs, of whom, no doubt, McFee and the Whites, between them, can furnish a reasonably accurate description. If this description of Carstairs appears to tally with Basil Honfleur’s and the women clerks’ description of Knight, our part in this matter would appear to be over, but I am sure they are not the same man.”

  “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 TEN

  THE BUNGALOW

  “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 neighbourhood, 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 head waiter. 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. Sh
e 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.”

  “Presumably you have heard him speak, then?”

  “Oh, yes. He had to, on that occasion, didn’t he? He had quite a gentlemanly kind of voice, quite public school, you know. If he was a commercial traveller he was a very high-class sort of one, I should say. But, of course, he was an artist as well.”