Noonday and Night mb-51

by Gladys Mitchell

  The first morning in Dovedale was wet, but newspapers were available, although not included in the price of the tour. Most of the men settled in the lounge to read while the women formed groups and gossiped. When the bar opened at eleven there was an exodus and lunch was served at twelve-thirty because there was a coach-trip to Matlock Bath in the afternoon.

  Breakfast was at eight on the following morning. The rain had cleared away and the party, leaving the hotel at a quarter past nine, spent an enjoyable day. There was a halt at Tissington to see one of the florally decorated wells (no longer restricted only to Ascension Day) and another short stop at Eyam. The last was unscheduled, but Tedworthy was anxious to take a photograph of the Saxon cross in the churchyard, a matter of more interest to him than was Cyril Noone’s account of the Reverend William Mompesson and his heroic villagers who, at the time of the Great Plague, remained in their villages and died there instead of fleeing for safety and risking a spread of infection.

  The next day was the one which nobody on the coach was ever likely to forget, for it was the day on which Cyril Noone disappeared. The morning arrangements included a trip to Buxton, but Tedworthy opted for a lonely walk in the Dove valley beside the water. He saw the rest of the party off at nine o’clock, then picked up his ashplant and set out. Lunch was to be early, so he looked at his watch, divided his time and decided to allow himself a quarter of an hour for a pint before the meal was served.

  The day was fine and sunny after the rain. He had made up his mind not to hurry, for he thought that a man who hastens his steps alongside Izaak Walton’s stream is worse than a fool.

  It was easy walking. The lower slopes of the hills were thickly wooded and the trees were still heavy with summer foliage, but above them was the stark grimness of the limestone, culminating in the dominating pointed summit of Thorpe Cloud.

  He passed limestone holes in the cliff, some large enough to be called caverns, crossed a narrow wooden bridge and came, in a very shallow reach of water which rippled and reflected the blue of the sky, to stepping stones. The path curved with the river. A kingfisher flashed past and a dipper, a surprising bird to find in the Derbyshire dales, was perched on a large stone with its legs in the water, bobbing and bowing in search of aquatic food.

  With no premonition of what was to come, Tedworthy spent a delightful morning and when he got back to the hotel in time for his pint of beer he spotted the coachdriver in the lounge, so he picked up his tankard at the bar and joined Noone at a window which overlooked the hills.

  ‘Pleasant walk, Mr Tedworthy?’

  ‘Very. Can’t beat this part of the world. Will you join me?’

  ‘Very kind of you, but I don’t touch anything midday when I’ve got a trip in the afternoon. Did you get a good picture in the churchyard yesterday?’

  ‘I hope so. I’m rather keen on these old stone crosses and this one was a beauty.’

  ‘So long as you didn’t want to pinch it and have me stick it in the boot! We carry some rare peculiar things now and again, you know, but a stone cross would be a new one for me to tote along.’

  The coach left at two for the afternoon excursion to Hulliwell Hall. It was one of several great houses in that part of the country and one that Tedworthy looked forward to visiting, for the building spanned six centuries and the earlier parts of it were unspoiled, since additions and repairs had been made, but the successive owners had permitted no other alterations.

  The driver parked the coach as near the entrance as he was allowed to do, and this left the passengers with only a short, steep, rather rough climb to the ancient gatehouse.

  As he had proved that morning, Tedworthy, who was glad enough of company at meals, preferred to be on his own when there was sightseeing to be done. He climbed the rough slope and ducked under a mediaeval archway inside the gatehouse.

  Just beyond the archway was the entrance to a small, stuffy museum, so he made a cursory inspection of bits of broken pottery, leather jugs, Roman coins, Victorian dolls and a scale model of Hulliwell Hall itself and then passed on to explore the actual edifice.

  To his relief, there was no question of having to join a conducted party. He inspected the kitchen, the fourteenth century chapel, the banqueting hall and the Tudor long gallery and then strolled out on to the terrace. Behind him were mullioned windows and twin towers. Below him were rose gardens, a park with noble trees and the river with its narrow bridge. It was a fine prospect and he tried to imagine himself the owner of such a place.

  He descended a flight of steps from the terrace to the rose-garden and took snapshots of the house, then he decided to return to the coach and smoke a quiet cigarette. If the driver had locked the coach and gone off for a bit, well, the weather was clement, the scenery pleasant and there was not enough wind to spoil the pleasure of smoking.

  The coach, however was open, although there was no sign of Cyril Noone. This surprised Tedworthy, since most of the passengers had left coats, mackintoshes, umbrellas and hand-luggage on the racks, and had been assured by Noone that the coach was always locked and their property perfectly safe at the various stopping-places.

  Tedworthy, who had enjoyed everything else that day, enjoyed his cigarette. He spread himself comfortably over the seat and by the time he had finished his leisurely smoke the others had come straggling back. Some had had tea at a discreetly-sited modern pavilion at the back of the house; others had noted familiar plants in the gardens; all were impressed by the size and beauty of the house and some spoke in admiring ignorance, others with self-conscious knowledge, about the pictures in the long gallery; some speculated on the chances that the house was haunted, the consensus of female opinion being that it most certainly was.

  Time passed, the coach filled up and gradually a certain impatience began to make itself felt. It was more than half an hour later than the time specified by Noone for his passengers’ return to the coach. There began to be murmurings.

  ‘He can’t be at the pub,’ said one of the men. ‘It’s out of hours.’

  ‘Too far from here, anyway,’ said another, indicating the rural surroundings. ‘We left the last village miles back.’

  ‘Can’t be engine trouble,’ said somebody else. ‘If it was, he or a mechanic would be tinkering with it.’

  ‘Perhaps he went into the house and got lost,’ said one of the women. ‘I should think it would be easy enough in a place that size.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s been taken ill,’ said another voice. ‘These coach-drivers always suffer with their stomachs. It’s wrenching that steering-wheel round the bends that does it.’

  They waited half-an-hour longer. Some got out of the coach and strolled about or climbed to the entrance to the gatehouse to look at the view.

  ‘Wish I’d had a cup of tea while I had the chance,’ said a woman wistfully, ‘but I suppose you’d have to pay again to go inside.’

  ‘You don’t want to go wandering off now, Doris,’ said her husband. ‘Ten to one the driver will be back any minute.’

  But the minutes passed and the driver did not appear. Tedworthy, his schoolmaster sense of responsibility and leadership asserting itself, went up to the house to make enquiries. The man who issued tickets at a small hut just inside the gatehouse was certain that Noone had not passed his portals.

  ‘I know him well,’ he said. ‘Spring and autumn tours, when it’s quiet and I haven’t got much to do, he always comes along and has a crack with me. Besides, nobody can pass into the courtyard without they buy a ticket from me. You can see that for yourself, sir. Oh, no, he hasn’t come up here.’

  Dissatisfied but convinced, Tedworthy returned to the coach and made his report. Another half-hour passed. Those who had left the coach returned to it. There was grumbling, a good deal of comment and speculation and a growing alarm and impatience. At last the man who had mentioned the pub came up to Tedworthy’s seat.

  ‘Look, old man,’ he said, ‘I used to drive a tank in the desert. How about you navigating and m
e taking this bus back to the hotel? We can’t stick here for ever. The hotel will have the means to contact the tour people and tell ’em what’s happened. What do you say? Be missing our dinner if we stay here much longer.’

  Tedworthy was dubious.

  ‘There may be a question of insurance if one of us drives the coach,’ he said. ‘Put it to the meeting. Let’s have a majority verdict.’

  The verdict was almost unanimous, so the ex-Desert Rat, guided by Tedworthy, brought the coach safely back to the inn in Dovedale.

  There was discussion at the dinner table as to what would happen when Noone came back eventually to Hulliwell Hall and found the coach gone. Tedworthy assured his table that among the drivers of commercial vehicles there was a brotherhood of the road and that it would be hard lines indeed if Noone could not hitch a lift back to the hotel. There remained a spare seat at dinner, however, and an empty and clean coffee-cup in the lounge. By the time the last of the party had finished a game of bridge and retired upstairs, the missing coach-driver had not re-appeared.

  In the morning there was an empty chair at the breakfast table and Tedworthy and the tank-soldier, joined by a decorative lady who was a retired hairdresser, sought another interview with the manager of the hotel, who already had been informed of the driver’s absence. He told them that a coach would be sent out from Buxton for the day’s outing, and that before nightfall another driver would be arriving from headquarters and would take over the tour if Noone had not put in an appearance. Meanwhile the police had been informed and a search was already under way.

  The police also sought information from the passengers. Before Noone’s coach and its new driver could move off, every person on it was interrogated, but the answers provided no help and no clue. Noone had been his cheerful, confident self that day. He had issued specific instructions as to the time he intended to move off from Hulliwell Hall. There had been no hitch in the arrangements until he failed to turn up and take his party back to the hotel. Nobody had anything to suggest.

  The new driver turned up later that night and the rest of the tour was carried out according to the promises made in the company’s brochure. Noone’s disappearance was a nine days’ wonder so far as most of the passengers were concerned. Only a very few, Tedworthy included, gave the matter much more thought except as a story to tell in the pub or at the table when the tour was over.

  Dame Beatrice, who had selected Tedworthy as her first guinea-pig, decided to begin her search for Driver Noone by covering the ground for herself. Tedworthy had made a first-class witness. He had been lucid, unbiased and exact. He also knew just how long a time had elapsed between his leaving the coach for Hulliwell Hall and his return to it to smoke his cigarette.

  ‘I wanted to make sure I’d meet the driver’s deadline,’ he said. ‘I’ve had too much experience of rounding-up kids on school outings to be a culprit myself.’

  ‘So you spent an hour and ten minutes in the Hall, and an hour and a half had been allowed. Was the coach in the same place, when you returned to it?’

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘Near enough?’

  ‘It was about thirty yards further from the path we had to take to walk up to the house.’

  ‘How do you know? I mean, how can you be sure?’

  ‘Where we got out of the coach there was a chunk of rock – limestone, I think – at the side of the road. I noticed it, although I’m not much of a geologist; I do photography in my spare time. I noticed it again when I passed it on my way back to the coach. The boulder wouldn’t have moved, so the coach must have done.’

  ‘Did you wonder why the coach had been moved?’

  ‘No, not to say wonder. There were a number of visitors, apart from our lot, so I supposed our driver had moved the coach to accommodate somebody’s car.’

  ‘And was there a car opposite the boulder you noticed?’

  ‘No, but a car could have been driven away again, of course, before I got back.’

  ‘It did not occur to you that your coach might have made quite a journey while your party was going over the Hall?’

  ‘No, I never thought of that, but I suppose it could have done. It was a long time for the driver to hang about.’

  ‘When you got back to the coach, you say it was open. Was it merely unlocked or was the door set back?’

  ‘Oh, the door was wide open. It is operated from the driver’s seat, you know, and I had noticed that when Noone got in after a stop he did so by unlocking the emergency door at the side of the coach near the back and then coming forward to his seat to let us in at the front. I assumed this was the only way of opening up the coach once the passengers’ door was properly closed. Mind you, I thought it was damned careless of him to have left the coach open with nobody in it, considering that people had left all sorts of gear on their seats and on the rack.’

  ‘What did you think had happened to him?’

  ‘At the time I thought he’d merely strolled off to speak to other coach-drivers and pass the time of day. We were by no means the only coach-party there.’

  ‘You did not think he had moved off in the coach and that perhaps somebody else had brought it back and had not parked it in exactly the same spot?’

  ‘No, that never occurred to me; and he wouldn’t have driven off to get the tank topped up, because he told us he’d taken on fourteen gallons before we started out after lunch.’

  The police, it turned out, had already explored that particular avenue. The only garage the coach had visited that day was the one nearest to the hotel in Dovedale. Here the fourteen gallons had been taken on board and the drive to Hulliwell Hall had been a short one and could not have used up any considerable amount of fuel.

  Dame Beatrice put up at the hotel which the coach-party had used and then she visited Hulliwell Hall. She pulled up opposite the boulder which Tedworthy had noticed, left her chauffeur in charge of the car and took the rough path up to the great house.

  The original structure, in effect, had been a castle dating from the late twelfth century. On to it had been grafted a large parlour and a chapel, both of the fourteenth century, and a magnificent long gallery of Elizabethan date. Another parlour had been added at the same time, and was known as the dining-parlour. It was wainscoted, had a large window decorated with coats of arms, a very fine fireplace and a painted ceiling.

  The banqueting hall was larger and a couple of centuries earlier in date. It retained its minstrels’ gallery and the dais and long tables of its mediaeval period, but there was modern clear glass in the window which was furnished with two stone corner seats approached by a steep stone step.

  Dame Beatrice allowed herself the hour and ten minutes which Tedworthy had given as the time he himself had spent at the Hall and then she returned to her car. Of one thing she had made certain. She had looked out of every window in the rooms open to visitors. From none of them had her car been visible. She had allowed for the superior height of a motor-coach, but had calculated that it also would be out of sight from the windows. Not even the most observant visitor to the Hall, therefore, could have said whether Noone’s coach had been driven away, and, if so, when it had returned and how long it had been absent.

  ‘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.’