Noonday and Night mb-51

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘No,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘For one thing, it is not all over so far as we are concerned. We have not found Knight, which is what we went to Saighdearan to do. However, I am glad to be back in England and shall enjoy a chat with Basil Honfleur. Then I shall resume the search for Knight. As for Basil himself, the evening is still young, so perhaps you will engage him on the telephone and suggest that he come to see us as soon as he can. We ourselves have done enough travelling for the time being and we know that he is not particularly busy at this time in the season.’

  ‘He’ll be out to dinner most likely, but I’ll try.’

  ‘Leave it until ten. He should be at home by then.’

  This was so. Laura made contact and Honfleur was bidden to come to lunch at the Stone House on the following day.

  ‘What is the news?’ he asked, as soon as he arrived.

  ‘We came back from Scotland yesterday and have left the whole matter in the hands of the police,’ replied Dame Beatrice.

  ‘You mean you are backing out?’

  ‘Yes, if you care to put it like that. There is nothing more for us to do until a man who calls himself Carstairs is found. But let us relax over lunch and then we shall tell you all.’

  ‘You had some success, then, at Fort William?’

  ‘I would not put it so positively.’

  When lunch was over and coffee had been served, Honfleur refused to contain himself any longer.

  ‘Come on, now, Dame Beatrice, please!’ he said. ‘What happened up there, and what did you find out?’

  ‘But little,’ Dame Beatrice replied. This was greatly to Laura’s surprise, for she had expected that Honfleur would at least be told that Vittorio had been found murdered. She knew better, however, than to mention this herself, and Dame Beatrice proceeded to give Honfleur a detailed description of the rest of their activities on the shores of Loch Linnhe. Laura added her quota whenever her employer turned the narrative over to her and, as the recital proceeded, Honfleur looked more and more sceptical, but he waited until it was finished before he put in a word.

  ‘I still can’t follow why you identified Carstairs with Knight,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you think that I did?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘The descriptions of the two men do not tally. All the same, there are factors which make me highly suspicious of Knight. The times fit all too well.’

  ‘How do you mean? What times? ’ asked Honfleur.

  ‘Knight has been on sick leave.’

  ‘We had a medical certificate, you know.’

  ‘One only?’

  ‘Well, yes, but we allow the chaps a lot of leeway. They get stomach ulcers, you see, so, if we get a medical certificate to say so, we trust the driver to come back when he feels fit enough, and of course we pay him while he’s away from work. Luckily, although I told you we are a subsidiary of the bus company, we’re independent of them so far as our treatment of our workers is concerned and so we can make our own rules.’

  ‘I see. Well, how long was Knight away before he took the coach up to Scotland?’

  ‘Three weeks altogether.’

  ‘During those three weeks a coach was “borrowed” and two of your drivers were killed.’

  ‘A nasty coincidence, but a coincidence nevertheless. I’m certain of it.’

  ‘Your drivers are long-service, responsible men, yet one of them moves, or allows to be moved, his coach from the entrance to Hulliwell Hall, and the same kind of thing happens at Dantwylch. In each case the driver is murdered. Do you think Noone and Daigh would have allowed any casual stranger to move (or to persuade them to move) the coach for which they were responsible?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘But if a mate of theirs – you told me that your drivers are a close-knit little community – if one of their own comrades begged them, as a favour, to move the coach, might they not, knowing that their passengers were safely occupied for anything from an hour to an hour and a half, have complied with what I have no doubt seemed to be a reasonable request?’

  ‘Well, I suppose, if you put it like that

  ‘I do put it like that.’

  ‘Oh, dear! But I still don’t believe Knight was involved in all this.’

  ‘Who else, then?’

  ‘Well, a driver from another company, I suppose. It’s known that there were other coaches, besides ours, at Hulliwell Hall and at Dantwylch on the days in question.’

  ‘Have it your own way for the present. Knight then returns to work…’

  ‘To help us out, remember.’

  ‘Possibly. I understand, though, that he did not usually take the tour up to Fort William.’

  ‘Well, no, but I can assure you he did not suggest the trip to me. I asked him whether he would be willing to deputise for Ford, whom I wanted for the Brittany tour, as he’s done it before—’

  ‘What about Driver Dibbens? Is he not Ford’s partner? I understood that they alternated.’

  ‘I was very glad to rest Dibbens. He’s had more than his share of extra work since we lost Noone and Daigh and while Knight himself was on sick leave.’

  ‘Were your drivers, any of them, acquainted with your erstwhile friend Vittorio?’

  Honfleur stared at her.

  ‘Please don’t call him my friend,’ he said. ‘I never really took to the fellow. He was useful, merely. Had a nose for antiques, and could manage to pick up things I wanted much cheaper than I could have got them for myself, even if I’d known where to look for them. It was because of what Miss Mendel reported to you that I severed my connection with him. I only hope she was telling the truth about what she was shown at his digs. Do you think she was?’

  ‘Yes. You have not answered my question.’

  ‘Well, yes, some of my drivers did know him. I used to reserve him a seat on a coach whenever he asked me to do so. He would go on a coach which was only half to three quarters booked up so that there was room in the boot to bring back anything he was able to find for me.’

  ‘And for himself, no doubt. How often did he travel with Knight?’

  ‘Not more than with several of the others.’

  ‘But he did travel with him. Where?’

  ‘Oh, when Knight was on the East Anglia tour he went with him, and on some of the West Country tours.’

  ‘But not to Scotland?’

  ‘No. Knight never did the Scottish tours except the one to Edinburgh and the Trossachs.’

  ‘I understood that he had been once before to Saighdearan, and that cannot have been more than a year or two ago, since the hotel is almost new.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right, but, you know, Dame Beatrice, I do honestly think you’re making bricks without straw.’

  ‘The Israelites, faced with a similar situation, had to gather their own straw. Allow me to do likewise.’

  ‘You suspect Knight of murdering two of his fellow drivers? But I’m sure that’s quite ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t think Honfleur was exactly enamoured of your conclusions,’ said Laura, when he had left them. ‘Why didn’t you tell him that Vittorio has been murdered, too?’

  ‘He will know soon enough. I do not wish to spread that particular bit of news until it is released to the newspapers.’

  ‘And what else?’

  Dame Beatrice cackled and did not reply, so Laura continued:

  ‘It seems to me that you’ve got something up your sleeve, as usual. What do you know that I don’t – apart from the value of those pistols? Funny the killer didn’t find them, seeing how he had ransacked that bungalow.’

  ‘He did not find them because he was not looking for them. I do not think he had any idea that they were there.’

  ‘What was he looking for, then?’

  ‘Probably some incriminating documents.’

  With this unsatisfactory answer Laura found she had to be content, so all she said was:

  ‘Oh, well, all we can do is to wait upon events, I suppose.’

  Events
were not long in coming. Laura, who never needed more than three to four hours of sleep a night, was wide awake when the sounds downstairs caused her to sit up in bed and listen. Then she crept out on to the landing and listened again. She returned to her room, pulled slacks and a sweater over her pyjamas and laced up a pair of stout but rubber-soled shoes before she made her way to her employer’s bedroom. Dame Beatrice, partly because of her medical training and partly because it came naturally at her advanced age, was a light sleeper. She sat up the moment Laura turned the handle of the door.

  ‘Don’t show a light,’ murmured Laura. ‘Visitors downstairs.’

  ‘I expected them,’ Dame Beatrice murmured in response. ‘Leave my door ajar.’ She fished a small revolver out from under her pillow, slid out of bed and pulled on her dressing-gown and slippers. ‘Into the cupboard with you.’

  The Stone House had been built in an age when the principal bedrooms needed an annexe in the form of a powder closet. That which was attached to Dame Beatrice’s room was large and airy and had a small window which overlooked the drive. Laura went over to this as Dame Beatrice quickly rearranged the bed, then extracted the key from the lock of the powder-room drawer and brought it in with her, but did not quite close the door. ‘Not burglars?’ Laura asked, sotto voce again.

  ‘I think not. Listen!’ The Stone House possessed a creaking stair. Dame Beatrice, whose life had been threatened more than once by the friends and relatives of persons she had helped to get (in the old days) hanged or (nowadays) put away, had realised the value of this stair and had allowed it to remain as a useful kind of watchdog. Sure enough the intruder trod on it as he made his stealthy progress upwards and it gave its usual warning. There was a slight exclamation, quickly stifled, and then the bedroom door creaked in its turn.

  Laura tensed herself. Dame Beatrice cocked her revolver. A faint, grey, late summer dawn was already beginning to break and she always opened her curtains when she was ready to get into bed, so that, although it was still too dark to recognise the intruder, it was just possible to follow his shadowy movements as he crossed over to the bed.

  A couple of grunts and a couple of heavy blows indicated his purpose. Dame Beatrice gave an eldritch screech, shouted, ‘Hands up! ’ and fired a couple of blanks into the room. There was a hoarse yell, the intruder leapt to the bedroom window, forced up the lower sash and dropped out into the garden.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura. ‘He may not be alone.’ But the next moment there was the sound of a car being started up.

  ‘Didn’t break his neck, anyway,’ said Laura. There was a pounding of feet on the staircase and a voice shouted with Gallic urgency,

  ‘Madame! Madame! Montrez-moi le gredin! Où est le scélérat?’

  ‘Gone like the dew from off the grass,’ Dame Beatrice replied, switching on the bedroom light. She stooped and picked up something from the floor. Laura uttered a gargling cry and, ignoring the object which Dame Beatrice had retrieved from where the intruder, in his efforts to force open the window, had dropped it on the carpet, pointed dramatically at the bed.

  ‘What – what – what on earth! ’ she said.

  ‘That?’ said her employer, leering indulgently at the object under the counterpane. ‘Oh, that is my doppelgänger.’

  ‘Good heavens! You mustn’t say that sort of thing, even in jest!’ said Laura, horrified. She subjected the counterfeit Dame Beatrice to scrutiny. She saw the vague outline of a thin body under the coverlet. On the pillow was a wig of black hair. A papier mâché head to which it was attached had been smashed to pieces.

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Laura, horrified.

  ‘The Sherlock Holmes touch,’ said Dame Beatrice complacently. ‘I had time to slip it into the bed before I joined you in the cupboard. But observe! We have a prize.’ She displayed the object she had retrieved from the carpet. It was a Commando fighting knife, a thin-bladed, double-edged, workmanlike little weapon with a black, cast-metal hilt topped by a brass knob. The grip was slightly indented with a series of criss-cross patterns to render it non-slip and at the top of the blade, which was about seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point, there was engraved on one side the makers’ name, that of a pre-eminent maker of razor-blades, and on the other the initials F – S and the words Fighting Knife.

  ‘He came well-prepared,’ said Laura grimly. ‘First a coshing and then a stabbing. You know, the odd thing is that there was something about him – of course one only got an impression — do you know who he was?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘You’ll have to charge him.’

  ‘On the strength of a doubtful recognition in the grey light which precedes the dawn?’

  ‘Fingerprints on the knife, then.’

  ‘I have overlaid them with my own.’

  ‘That wouldn’t fox the police.’

  ‘No, perhaps not, but I am sure he would have taken the precaution of wearing gloves. Besides, I want him arrested for actual murder, not for a clumsy attempt at it. I think that, if this little episode means anything, it means that the murderer of Noone and Daigh…’

  ‘And possibly Knight…’

  ‘Is becoming alarmed, and that indicates that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are making progress.’

  ‘What I should like to know is how he got wise to you. I mean, I know that your name has been mentioned in connection with the inquest on Noone, but why should this thug believe you to be so dangerous to him that he sets out to kill you? He doesn’t even know I broke into that bungalow.’

  ‘All the same, he must know that we went to Saighdearan and have been told of a mysterious foreigner who spoke to the boy at the hotel.’

  ‘You will report to the police, though, won’t you? He may not stop at one attempt and the rôle of guard-dog to a hunted fawn has never appealed to me. I would much rather the police took over.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I shall report to the police, but I shall not inform them that I believe I recognised the man. For one thing, that would not suit my plans and, for another, they might not believe me. We must not be too precipitate at this juncture. I shall simply tell them that a man broke in and made his escape in a car.’

  ‘After trying to murder you.’

  ‘Since I was never in danger, that fact need not emerge.’

  ‘But suppose he tries again?’

  ‘Like Antonio, I am armed and well prepared.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me who you think it was?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, and, in that semi-darkness, both of us may have guessed wrongly.’

  ‘Neither of us has ever seen Knight,’ said Laura thoughtfully.

  CHAPTER 12

  No Coaches on the Roads

  « ^ »

  There was a long pause. Dame Beatrice looked enquiringly at her secretary, but realised that the pause was a pause for thought. At last Laura raised her eyes and spread out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice, with satisfaction. ‘I wondered when you were going to ask me that.’

  Laura, accustomed as she was to having her mind read, gaped at her employer and then grinned.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘You don’t catch me out like that. Just what do you think I’m going to ask you?’

  ‘If this Commando dagger, with its blade which must measure, midway down the length, at least seven-tenths of an inch across, was used to assassinate Noone and Daigh.’

  ‘So what’s the answer?’

  ‘I do not know, and I am not prepared to guess.’ Her tone was so final that Laura said,

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother to go back to bed. How early can we telephone the police about this break-in?’

  ‘There is no hurry. Contact them after breakfast, if you will.’

  ‘There’s another point which is bothering me a bit, you know.’

  ‘Oh, dear! You mean our intruder’s acumen.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. From the mome
nt I heard the first sounds downstairs, right up to the moment I came in here, into your room, not more than a minute or two could have passed.’

  ‘Indeed? Yes, I expect you are right.’

  ‘Well, now, how did this man, with five bedrooms and your upstairs consulting-room to choose from, come straightway to where you were sleeping?’

  ‘That is, presuming I was the person he intended to murder. What did you think of the wig I had spread so artistically over the pillow? One learns a great deal from the Sherlock Holmes stories, does one not? The dog which did nothing in the night? The life-like bust which appeared to throw a perfect silhouette of Holmes’ profile against the window-blind?’

  ‘When are you going to see Honfleur again?’ asked Laura, dismissing these questions as persiflage.

  ‘When our night visitor has had time to realise that I am not proposing to give his name to the police. I might, however, ask you to go and see Mr Honfleur.’

  ‘But you are going to report the break-in?’

  ‘It is my duty as a citizen to do so,’ replied Dame Beatrice solemnly. ‘Well, off to your bath, or whatever you intend to do before breakfast. I am for bed.’ She removed the black wig which was attached to the smashed mask, excavated a kind of Guy Fawkes figure encased in hessian from beneath the coverlet, placed the lot in a vast oak chest at the foot of the bed, retired to rest and resumed her light slumbers. Laura went down the garden to the well-screened swimming pool, discarded her pyjamas and dived in.

  ‘ “I am sent,” ’ quoted Laura to a worried Basil Honfleur, ‘ “with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.” Or, of course, under the carpet, just as Dame B’s policy may dictate.’

  ‘Her policy? She told me on the telephone that an attempt had been made on her life. Can that possibly be true?’

  ‘I was an eye-witness. Goggle-eyed and petrified, too, I don’t mind telling you. Look here, what is going on around this coach-station of yours?’

  ‘I wish I knew. Three drivers gone and no knowing when there might have been a fourth, except…’

  ‘Except?’