Noonday and Night (Mrs. Bradley) Page 5

  “I have discovered little that was not already known to the police,” said Dame Beatrice, when she met Honfleur again. “There was an interval of roughly an hour and a quarter between the time the passengers left the coach to visit Hulliwell Hall and the time when the first of them returned to it.

  “From evidence given to me by Mr. Tedworthy, a most sensible and observant witness, it is pretty certain that the coach had been moved while it was vacant except for the driver. I attempted to check where it went by enquiring at the nearest public house, but obtained no definite information, as coach-drivers, you may be relieved to know, do not indulge in alcoholic refreshment in the middle of the day.

  “On the way to the public house my car had passed a church and I noticed that the sexton and an assistant were engaged in digging a grave. I stopped the car and went into the churchyard to make enquiries, but it seems that the person to be buried was a woman who died a natural death and who had lived in the village all her life.

  “Mr. Tedworthy asserts that, when he returned to the coach, it was open, in spite of the fact that the passengers had left possessions on the seats and the racks. This further inclines me to the belief that the coach had been moved some distance and that when it returned, not exactly to the same spot as before, your driver was no longer with it. I informed the local police of my opinion and they agree with me that the coach might have been moved, but not necessarily very far. They say that their search for Driver Noone is being prosecuted with the utmost endeavour, but I am inclined to think that they still believe his disappearance was voluntary.”

  “I suppose we must consider it as a possibility,” said Basil Honfleur. “Well, what’s the next move?”

  “I think we must leave Derbyshire to the police for the time being and I will see what Dantwylch has to offer. If one thing is clear, it is that your two drivers are either part of a conspiracy…”

  “I reject that theory entirely!”

  “…or that they are the victims of one.”

  “But why?”

  “One keeps an open mind. The key to the matter, of course, is the coach which disappeared from Dantwylch and so mysteriously reappeared in Swansea. Why Swansea?”

  “I don’t know, except that, since the troubles escalated in Northern Ireland, we have altered one of our schedules.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. We used to go across from Liverpool to Dublin. From there we made a tour round Northern Ireland to Belfast, Coleraine, Londonderry, Donegal, and down to Sligo, then across to Roscommon and Athlone, and so to Galway. From there we did Ennis, Limerick, and Waterford and came back to Dublin up the west coast.”

  “What about Killarney?”

  “That was a separate tour, but we still crossed from Liverpool to Dublin. We still do the Killarney tour, but not from Dublin. It’s Swansea to Cork now, and then we go to Killarney by way of Macroom, tour the Ring of Kerry, go up as far as Tralee, and then home again by way of Cork, Swansea, Llanelli (just to give the passengers a glimpse of South Wales), and that’s their lot. On the outward journey we tip them off the coach at Swansea and in Eire the natives take over and an Irish courier takes the party round. We used to do the lot in the old Dublin days, but the Irish have taken over, so from our point of view the tour is not so profitable as it used to be.”

  “What happens to the coach you take to Swansea?”

  “Oh, the driver brings it straight back and we send it off on one of our shorter tours while the passengers are in Ireland, and pick them up again at Swansea on their return. Then they get their night at Llanelli and so home.”

  “So the sight of one of your coaches down at the docks in Swansea would not occasion surprise to the port authorities or any other interested party?”

  “Not on the first day it was there, and, of course, as for Daigh’s coach, the Welsh police found it before anybody at the docks had even reported it was there.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DANTWYLCH, BELOW THE KNOLL

  Dame Beatrice, having given her news and her views to Honfleur, prepared for her next inquisition. Having nothing to guide her except a list of names and addresses, she made what turned out to be an unhelpful choice of witnesses to the disappearance of Driver Daigh from the cathedral city of Dantwylch in West Wales, when, because one of them had a Welsh surname, she selected Miss Harvey and Mrs. Williams, who had shared a seat and a twin-bedded room on the tour of the Pembrokeshire coast.

  The two women were sisters and Londoners. There was a gap of ten years between their ages, Mrs. Williams being the younger. She was a widow and, since the death of her husband five years previously, she and Miss Harvey had put their savings into the purchase and stock of a small general shop on the south coast where they did well enough to be able to take an annual holiday and pay a caretaker to manage the shop during the week that they were absent.

  This caretaker was their brother’s son, who was willing to give up a week of his own holiday to oblige his aunts and to make a little extra money on the side for himself. The shop was in Moordown, a suburb of Bournemouth, so he and his wife were able to spend Sunday at the seaside after he had taken the travellers on the Saturday morning to pick up their coach.

  After much discussion, deliberation, and consultation of various brochures, the sisters had decided to visit the land of Mrs. Williams’ deceased husband and, as had been the case on their previous coach tour, they intended to enjoy themselves.

  “For everything’s good for a laugh if you look at it the right way,” said Mrs. Williams, upon whom her widowhood sat lightly. Her sister agreed and it was with blithe anticipation that they gave their modest suitcases into the care of the driver and settled into their seats.

  The overnight stop was at Monmouth, where there was little time for the sisters to see anything much except the Monnow Bridge with its fortified gateway supporting a watchman’s lodging, the statue of Henry V who was born in Monmouth Castle, and Goscombe John’s bronze figure of C. S. Rolls, the motorist and aviator. These last two they ignored, knowing little of either.

  So Miss Harvey and Mrs. Williams went for a short stroll as far as the bridge when dinner was over and then they retired to their twin beds after what, for them, had been an exciting and somewhat tiring day. On the following morning the coach went by way of Abergavenny and Swansea, Llanelli and Carmarthen, to Tenby, where the party was to stay for three nights at a hotel on the cliff-top. Here Miss Harvey and Mrs. Williams again were delighted with everything until later, when, with the rest of the passengers, they found themselves marooned in Dantwylch with neither coach nor driver.

  The first full day in Tenby was given over to the coach-party to employ in any way it pleased. Lunch was provided at the hotel, from whose good position on the cliff-top there were views of the bay, the islands, the little harbour, the sea-girt rocks, and a wide expanse of the sea itself.

  Some of the passengers spent their time on the beach, although this involved a long trek down and a pretty steep climb up again. Others explored the town and admired the old walls. They visited the shops, the remains of the castle, and even ventured into the small museum. The rest of the party went across to Caldy Island by motor-boat to view the Cistercian monastery and the remains of a Benedictine priory.

  The second full day was to include a drive to Dantwylch to visit the Cathedral and the ruins of the bishop’s palace.

  “We haven’t got much farther to go for our lunch,” said John Daigh, the coach-driver, when he had pulled up in the main street of Dantwylch near the traffic-free by-road which led down to the Cathedral and the ruins. “There are two or three places nearby where you can get a cup of coffee and you’ll have time for a bit of sightseeing, too. We leave here at exactly twelve noon, please. I’d like you all to be very punctual because I’m not allowed to hang about here. I can only set down and pick up. As soon as you are all off the coach I have to take it to the car-park. If anybody doesn’t get back on time, that’s where we’ll all have to
go back and wait for stragglers, but it’s a good walk away and it’s up-hill.” He laughed jovially and the passengers joined in. “You won’t want to miss me!” he assured them.

  Most of them opted for coffee first and exploring afterwards, and Miss Harvey and Mrs. Williams joined the majority in a small restaurant close at hand, having watched the coach drive away.

  The sisters enjoyed their coffee, wended their way downhill, inspected the Cathedral with its shrine of the patron saint and walked as far as the entrance to the bishop’s palace, but decided that they would not be able to spend enough time among the very extensive ruins to justify the charge for admission. They bought a leaflet “just to show we’ve been,” and took the long, up-hill trek back to the bus-stop.

  They were back far too soon, so they spent the time—killing it, to be more exact—in gazing in at nearby shop windows and in purchasing some sweets and a local newspaper. By dribs and drabs the rest of the coach-party joined them at the bus stop. The narrow pavement gradually became congested and a church clock struck twelve. Eyes were fixed expectantly on the road up which the coach had disappeared, but no coach came.

  The church clock struck a disconsolate quarter; later, a warning half hour. Still no coach appeared. The company became first restless, then agitated, and at last angry. A policeman came up and one of the male passengers, abetted by others, told him of their dilemma. He suggested that one of them should go to the car-park and “hurry the driver up a bit, because you are congesting the footway, look you.”

  Two of the men took his advice, having received from the policeman explicit directions in order to reach the car-park by the shortest route. They returned at the end of twenty-five minutes with the stunning information that neither coach nor driver was to be found. The policeman then came to the rescue by alerting his inspector. That official, realising the importance of the tourist trade to his native town, made himself busy on the telephone and in an admirably short time a local coach pulled up, took the party on board, and transported them to the hotel overlooking Fishguard harbour where they were booked in for lunch.

  The hotel, which owed its very existence to the coach-parties who patronised it all through the summer months, coped efficiently and the local driver, having telephoned his employers and eaten the lunch intended for Driver Daigh, expressed his willingness to carry out the rest of the day’s programme and to return the party to their hotel in Tenby in plenty of time for dinner.

  At the dinner tables there was only one topic of conversation and only one viable solution of the mystery. The coach and its driver had been hi-jacked.

  “Happens all the time,” ran the general consensus of opinion. “Arabs or the Irish, most likely, or an escaped convict or someone.”

  Miss Harvey and Mrs. Williams were caught up in the general excitement, but, like most of the women, they felt a considerable amount of dismay.

  “What’s going to happen to the rest of the tour, and how are we going to get home?” they asked nervously.

  “Oh, the company will send up another coach,” said an omniscient male. “You don’t want to worry. The receptionist here will have been on the telephone to them. We’re supposed to have a trip to Aberystwyth and Devil’s Bridge tomorrow, but, myself, I’d just as soon spend another day here in Tenby.”

  The party did spend another day in Tenby. The hotel, it turned out, having received a telephone call from the Company’s head office, arranged to give the passengers an unscheduled lunch, and before tea-time that afternoon a relief coach and its driver had turned up, and the party was conveyed to Towyn, where it was to spend the night. The rest of the tour, apart from continued speculation and surmise and an unprecedented sale of papers “in case we should be in the news,” continued as per programme.

  “We don’t let them down,” said Honfleur, somewhat smugly, later, to Dame Beatrice.

  “We couldn’t understand it at all,” said Mrs. Williams, the more personable and therefore, perhaps, the more forthcoming of the two. “It needs some looking into, that it does.”

  “I am here to look into it,” said Dame Beatrice, already beginning to regret her choice of witnesses.

  “We heard there was another coach, before ours, that had something happen to it,” said Mrs. Williams.

  “It lost its driver, yes. This was not your first coach tour, I am told.”

  “Nor it was with most of the people on the tour. Most had been before.”

  Dame Beatrice nodded.

  “I wonder whether you had any premonitions, before you left the coach to go sightseeing in Dantwylch, that something untoward was going to happen?” she enquired.

  This inviting and leading question was to test the suggestibility and therefore, to some extent, the reliability of the witnesses. The sisters, true to their Cockney origin, stood firm.

  “Of course not,” said Miss Harvey, “else we should have stayed behind in Tenby.”

  “Could you give me a short account of exactly what happened that day at Dantwylch?”

  Like schoolchildren asked to describe a day in their summer holidays, the sisters, sometimes interrupting and very occasionally contradicting one another, began their account.

  “We got up after we’d made a cup of tea with the electric machine which another lady had shown us how to manage the night before, had a nice wash, and then we went downstairs. I had grapefruit juice and bacon and egg and Maud had orange juice and a plate of cornflakes…”

  “Porridge, that day, Carrie.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s right, porridge. After that she had bacon and sausage and a fried tomato, and we finished up with toast and marmalade, because I said as the bread rolls would be too filling if we had cakes at the coffee shop and our lunch to come. Besides, rolls is more fattening nor toast, though I will say as they put plenty of butter on the table…”

  “And there was two kinds of marmalade, the chunky and the shred…”

  “And honey. Don’t forget the honey. All in them individual little pots, so convenient and giving fair shares for everybody.”

  “Better than that, because there was six pots between four of us, but, of course, we only took one pot each…”

  “And I finished yours up, you not liking too much marmalade on top of your butter and me not liking to waste good food.”

  At last Dame Beatrice got them to describe the journey itself and their experiences in Dantwylch.

  “Can you remember the last words you heard the driver say?” she asked, at the end of another pointless recital.

  “Not word for word, but it was clear enough,” said Mrs. Williams. “He was putting us down so we could have a coffee and a walk round, and we was to be back in the same place at twelve sharp ’cos he wasn’t allowed to hang about for us. If anybody was late back, he’d wait for them in the car-park further up the hill. But nobody was late back and we all hung about there for more than half the day, all told. We was just mooching around and looking at the shops, but not liking to go far away in case the coach turned up while we was gone. My feet ached, because it was a fair old climb up from the Cathedral, and not all that much to see when you got inside. Dark, I mean, and, to my mind, not so good as Christchurch Priory.” Mrs. Williams seemed prepared to go on, but Dame Beatrice prevented this.

  “You had stopped for lunch in Swansea on your second day out. Did the driver give any indication that he knew anybody or had any friends there?”

  “Swansea? What about it? Oh—Swansea. You mean because that’s where they found our coach?”

  “Yes. Did the driver appear to make any contacts there?”

  The sisters shook their heads.

  “He never said nothing about knowing nobody there, not in particular,” said Mrs. Williams. “He knew the hotel, of course. Good food, but very crowded it was. He knew the hotel because he’d taken coach-parties there before. It was the coaches’ usual lunch-stop and right in the middle of the town. The dining room was so full that some of our gentlemen had a job to get hold of an
ybody to bring a glass of beer to the table and there hadn’t been no time to go into the bar. At table there wasn’t hardly elbow-room to use your knife and fork. I had a steak. Maud, you had the plaice, didn’t you?”

  “So the driver knew the hotel, but you do not think he had friends in the town,” said Dame Beatrice. “Let us return to Dantwylch. What happened at the end of your long wait for the coach which did not return to pick you up?”

  “A policeman come up and one or two of the gentlemen explained what had happened.”

  “And then?”

  “He sent two of them up to the car-park, but, of course, Mr. Daigh and the coach wasn’t there. Funny you should ask about friends in the town, though, now I come to think of it. Mind you, we thought he was only joking, but he did say, pulling our legs, like, mine and my sister’s (very pleasant he always made himself to everybody), he did say as he might be picking up his girl-friend in Dantwylch. ‘And her trousseau,’ he said. ‘Funny, some of the things these women like,’ he said. Then he laughed, very pleasant he was, and off we went to Dantwylch and, of course, we never see him again once he’d drove off to the car-park. I was real sorry, I can tell you.”

  “Did the two gentlemen find out whether the coach had ever reached the car-park?”

  “Oh, yes. It had got there all right, but it wasn’t there when they arrived. There was two other coaches, they said, but not ours. They spoke to the drivers, but they couldn’t tell them nothing.”

  “Can you remember their names?”

  “Our two gentlemen, do you mean? One was Mr. Ames. I don’t know the other one’s name. He was travelling on his own, I think, wasn’t he, Maud? Mr. Ames was married, but the other gentleman…”

  “Nice and polite, but kept to himself except at the table,” said Miss Harvey. “Nobody couldn’t keep to theirselves there, because of the numbers, you see.”

  “But the other coach-drivers had seen your coach come in, had they?”

  “No, but they’d seen it drive out. They didn’t think nothing of it, because they thought our driver was going off to pick us up, but, of course, it was much too early for that. It wouldn’t have been no more than about eleven o’clock, they said.”