Noonday and Night (Mrs. Bradley) Page 3

  “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 drivers 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.”

  “And where, exactly, did you ‘mislay it?’”

  “It disappeared at some time during the middle of the morning from Dantwylch, right out on the west coast. That’s miles away from Swansea, where the Welsh police tracked it down.”

  “This, I gather, was the second incident, but you have mislaid no other coaches?”

  “No. We’re glad of that, of course, but it’s the missing drivers who concern us. The driver-courier is the king-pin of any tour. He’s the all-pervasive, all-persuasive adhesive which binds the coach-party together and holds it firm. He’s the father-figure, if you like, of the tourists. They trust him absolutely.”

  “And you have lost a couple of these paternal fixatives! Dear me!”

  “And replacements aren’t easy to find, especially as we’ve got another chap on sick leave. We’re having to over-schedule our other men, and that’s not going to make us very popular with them. A driver isn’t a bit thrilled when he comes back from six days in Yorkshire on Friday night and is told he’s got to take another coach-load for a nine-day trip to Scotland starting early on Saturday morning.”

  “I sympathise with him.”

  “So do I, but what can I do? We keep within the legal limits of working hours, of course, even when we have to pile it on like that, and we try to even out the extra duties so far as we possibly can, but it’s very unfair to switch a man on to a route he has never travelled before. He doesn’t know the hotels or where to stop for mid-morning coffee or afternoon tea, let alone give out bits of history and other information which the passengers expect. Of course we pay out bonuses, but it isn’t, any of it, good enough and it can’t go on.”

  “Have you spoken to your other drivers about the disappearances? Has none of them anything to suggest?”

  “Nothing at all. They’ve heard no rumours; they’ve been told no secrets. They assure us that the missing men had given no indication whatever that anything was wrong. If there had been anything amiss, I’m sure they would
have known. They’re a pretty close-knit bunch and have been together for years. The passengers get pretty close-knit, too. It’s very interesting to see how sociable and gregarious most people are.”

  “You mean many of them have travelled together before?”

  “No, not that. It’s unlikely that they would, because, although they travel with us time and again, naturally they choose different tours each year. All the same, it’s true to say that whereas a collection of individuals boards the coach at the starting place and the pick-up points, all of them keeping a jealous eye on their rights and their possessions, by the time the second day comes round they’re a unit; they’ve fused; they’re an entity. But you must have the proper chap in charge for it to work that way.”

  “You lost one man and had a coach borrowed and then abandoned in Wales and you lost another man in the Peak District, you tell me. It seems that there must surely be some connection.”

  “By the way, the Derbyshire man, Noone, was the first, not the second, to disappear.”

  “I wonder whether that fact has any significance? Derbyshire and West Wales, where, as you say, the disappearances took place, are a good many miles apart. According to the letter I received from your chairman, however, there does seem to have been one connection between the two incidents.”

  “Oh? What was that? Something significant, do you mean?”

  “I hardly know whether it is significant or not, but it is certainly interesting because it seems to have provided a requisite opportunity for the drivers to vanish if they had planned to do so.”

  “That’s interesting. How do you mean?”

  “Your chairman informs me that in each case the coach was empty when the driver disappeared. Could this mean that the passengers were out of the coach long enough for something to happen to the driver?”

  “Yes, could be. The Derbyshire tour includes an afternoon visit to Hulliwell Hall and we always allow plenty of time for that. There is a free morning and then the coach sets off immediately after lunch and the passengers can take their time over their sightseeing. Those who want tea can buy it at the Hall and the coach gets back to the hotel in time for people to take a bath and to change for dinner.”

  “Whereabouts is the hotel?”

  “We generally use a hotel in Buxton, but for this one particular tour we did not.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, there was. They had a vast literary conference in Buxton that week and the hotels were full, so we had to make other arrangements.”

  “At short notice?”

  “Oh, no. Buxton told us in March.”

  “So where did the coach stay?”

  “We fixed up a place in Dovedale, but I can’t see that the change of hotel would account for the disappearance of the driver.”

  “Does the coach remain at the same hotel for the duration of the tour? Are there, I mean, daily outings, or does the coach move on to other hotels?”

  “It varies. Mostly the coach moves on, but the Derbyshire tour stays all five nights in the same place and goes out each day as you suggest. In the case of the Welsh tour, we stay a night in Monmouth, three nights at Tenby, a night at Towyn, and the last night in Hereford.”

  Dame Beatrice’s next interview, by mutual arrangement, was with the chairman of County Motors. She made further enquiry about the coach tours.

  “West Wales?” he said. “Well, we think it’s a particularly good tour, very popular, and Daigh, the missing driver, was one of our best men.”

  “Well, we must try to find him. What other tours are there?”

  “Oh, you are going to take on the job, then? My board will be delighted. Another tour goes up to Scotland, staying one night in Yorkshire, one in Edinburgh, and two in a new hotel near Fort William, from which we go over to Skye for a day. We have many others, but the Skye tour is one of the most popular. We come back through Pitlochry and Perth, go on to Edinburgh, and then across the Lowlands to Carlisle and the Lakes, and so home by way of Grange-over-Sands and Warwick.”

  “And when, exactly, did the drivers disappear?”

  “Noone vanished while his passengers were visiting Hulliwell Hall. They had the morning free to explore Dovedale or go to Buxton and then the coach moved off at two o’clock to give them plenty of time to see the Hall and have tea there, if they wanted it. Honfleur says they would be out of the coach for the better part of a couple of hours.”

  “And during that time the driver vanished and has not been traced. But the coach, I assume, was where he had left it?”

  “Near enough, although we think it had been moved. Anyway, after the passengers had hung about and made all sorts of enquiries, one of them—most improperly, of course—drove the coach back to the hotel. He then made a report which, when the driver did not show up that evening, the management relayed to us.”

  “And your second man?”

  “Daigh got himself and his coach spirited away during a long coffee-stop in Dantwylch. This was on a trip out from Tenby to visit Dantwylch Cathedral and the ruins of the bishop’s palace.”

  “A long coffee-stop? How long?”

  “About an hour and a half. The coach pulled up at a spot convenient to the sightseers and then went off to the local car-park. The arrangement was that it would return for the passengers at a given time to take them on to Fishguard for lunch, but, of course, it never arrived.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “Some of the passengers went to the car-park and found that the coach had been there, but had only stayed a very short time. They returned to the others and they all hung about until a policeman told them they were obstructing the footway. They informed him of what had happened. The upshot was that a local coach was laid on and the day’s outing proceeded according to plan, except that the passengers arrived extremely late for lunch. Eventually the coach was traced to Swansea. We sent up another driver as soon as we got a ’phone call from the manager of the hotel at Tenby after the passengers had been taken back there for the night, and the police soon traced our own coach, so that was all right so far, except that they haven’t traced Daigh.”

  “It seems a most mysterious business. Can you supply me with a list of the passengers who took these two tours and give me their addresses?”

  “Yes, of course. Honfleur’s desk-clerks will know. I’ll call him. They’ll have all the details at his office.”

  “And can I possibly find out which of the passengers have travelled with you before? I understand from Mr. Honfleur that the majority of your clients, having sampled the amenities you offer, are inclined very much to book with you again.”

  “Again and again, most of them. It’s very gratifying. I will certainly obtain the information you require and will let you have it at the earliest possible moment. I am so grateful that you are prepared to help us. I am not at all in agreement with Honfleur that it is a waste of your time. The police will do their best, but I think a private enquiry may obtain quicker results.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  HULLIWELL HALL

  Dame Beatrice spent the whole of the following day studying the lists of names and addresses she had been given so that she could make her choice of witnesses. She was working entirely in the dark, for Basil Honfleur could give her no further information. He had met none of the passengers. There were thirty names on the Derbyshire list and twenty-eight people had taken the Welsh tour.

  The ideal procedure, she supposed, would have been to interview each and every passenger, as the police had done, but she felt that time was important, so for the Derbyshire witness she chose Vernon Tedworthy. He had a telephone number, which expedited matters, so she called him up and asked whether she might visit him.

  Vernon Tedworthy was a retired schoolmaster. A pencilled note on the Derbyshire list informed Dame Beatrice that his only previous experience of touring with County Motors had been in 1971, when he had travelled with his wife on a trip to Yorkshire.


  When he and Dame Beatrice met, he told her that he had intended to stay at his school (where he was deputy headmaster) until his sixty-fifth birthday, but two things had caused him to change his mind and retire at the optional age of sixty years. One was the death of his wife when he was fifty-nine; the other was that his school, a good, well-run, trouble-free Secondary Modern establishment of three hundred and fifty boys, each of them known by name to the headmaster and his staff of ten picked and dedicated men, was to be turned into a two-thousand strong, mixed Comprehensive.

  It was much less than certain that Vernon Tedworthy’s headmaster would be offered the captaincy of this gargantuan hydra, and even less certain that Tedworthy would retain his post as deputy head. That would go to some young man with a university degree to flourish, a young man who, as like as not, would do little classroom teaching, but who would be employed mostly in an administrative capacity only, with plenty of paper-work to fill up his time, but with little or no contact with the real life of the school as personified by its couple of thousand boys and girls.

  “Not for me,” said Tedworthy. He had given in his notice of retirement to take effect at the end of the Easter term following his sixtieth birthday. “Why on earth they want to muck up perfectly good schools, whether they’re Sec. Mod. or grammar schools, to satisfy the sacred cow of Equality of Opportunity, I don’t know. I know it sounds all right, but some animals will always be more equal than others, don’t you think?”

  After his retirement he had sold his house and lived for a time with his daughter and her husband and family, but in the following spring he had bought a small bungalow in Dorset and lived alone there except for occasional visits from relatives and friends. He ran a small car, but when it came to holidays he decided that he would try another coach tour. It was not good to lead too solitary a life.