Noonday and Night mb-51

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘So there doesn’t seem to be a lead anywhere,’ said Laura, when they were discussing the affair in Dame Beatrice’s room after dinner that evening. ‘What’s the next move? Do we look for another dead body, do you suppose? I’m getting morbid about this business.’

  ‘The manager has consented to my questioning the hotel staff, although he assures me – and I have a feeling he is right – that they can tell me nothing which they have not already told the police.’

  ‘Is it worth while to bother them, then?’

  ‘I think, for my own satisfaction, it must be done.’

  ‘I could do a bit of rubber-necking round the village, if that would be of any help. You’d have to tell me what you want me to say, though.’

  ‘ “That shall be tomorrow, not tonight.” ’

  ‘ “I must bury sorrow out of sight,” ’ capped Laura, grinning. ‘Browning could be as banal as Shakespeare when he liked, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Heresy of the deepest dye!’

  ‘About Shakespeare? What price some of those ghastly rhyming couplets at the end of the scenes in Macbeth, to name but one play?’

  ‘Curtain lines on an uncurtained stage? I am not well-informed on the subject of the Elizabethan theatre.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I’ll say good-night, then, before I become tediously informative. What time breakfast?’

  ‘Half-past eight, I think.’

  ‘Right. I wonder whether there would be any joy in having a swim in the loch? It ain’t the plunging-in I mind; it’s the perishing getting-out.’

  For what it might turn out to be worth, there was one scrap of information which, after breakfast on the following morning, Dame Beatrice gleaned from a previously untapped source. This was a boy of sixteen who had not been questioned by the police for the simple reason that he had not been in the hotel at the time of their visit.

  It was Laura who discovered him and obtained an item of information while Dame Beatrice was interviewing the chamber-maids.

  ‘You’d better talk to him, I think,’ she said to her employer. ‘He says he was “away to Oban” when the police called, but he did encounter a stranger whom he describes as “a black man”. That, in these parts, could mean anybody darkish – a Spaniard or a Pakistani – let alone a Sudanese the colour of a black boot.’

  ‘What is the youth’s name?’

  ‘Wullie MacKay.’

  ‘And where shall I find him?’

  ‘In the yard behind the scullery. He’s gutting fish we’re to have for lunch. The hotel buys in bulk from the quayside and the eviscerations are one of Wullie’s jobs. He seems to be a man-of-all-work.’

  Dame Beatrice opened the conversation with the lad by asking how the name of the hamlet ought to be pronounced. She gave her own phonetic rendering of Saighdearan.

  ‘Och, no!’ said Wullie, far too polite to show amusement. He pronounced it for her.

  ‘Ah! Sy-tshir-un! ’ echoed Dame Beatrice . ‘I am obliged to you. Would it have a meaning in English?’

  ‘Aye. Saighdearan will be meaning Soldiers.’

  ‘Indeed? It ties up with Fort William, I suppose?’

  ‘That place,’ said Wullie darkly, ‘will be having another name put upon it when we get our way.’

  ‘You are a Scottish Nationalist, are you? But surely your own name is William? Besides, what about William Wallace? He was also a great nationalist, although, I believe, by birth a Welshman.’

  Wullie threw away the entrails of the fish he was cleaning and they were swooped upon by a squawking, hostile bird. He said, ‘I’ll no play with words. What would it be that you are wanting with myself?’

  ‘A description of the black man.’

  ‘Och, him!’ said Wullie, evincing no surprise. ‘He was a little, thin fellow, maybe like a tinker, but I think he was a foreign man. Besides, he had money. He was showing me an English five-pound note and saying it would be for myself if I would tell him which coach-party was staying here and what would be the name of the driver.’

  ‘And could you tell him that?’

  ‘Och, aye.’

  ‘And he gave you the five pounds?’

  ‘That, no.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I kenned the was up to no good, so I was telling him the wrong party and the wrong driver. He said that was no’ what he was after and he ganged away and took the five pounds with him.’

  ‘Did you ever see him again?’

  ‘I did not.’ He threw a fish-head to a passing cat and bent all his attention on his work.

  ‘Well, it is a pity that you should be done out of five pounds because of scruples which become you,’ said Dame Beatrice, producing an equivalent bank-note and laying it on the end of the wooden block on which he was so sedulously operating. ‘Would you care to comment on an idea which I entertain? I think your black man was an Italian.’

  ‘Keep your money, lady. I couldna say what his nationality might ha’ been,’ said Wullie, pointedly ignoring the gift. ‘He was no’ from these parts, anyway, and I didna trust him.’

  Dame Beatrice left the five-pound note where it lay and went back to Laura.

  ‘I tried another long shot,’ she said, ‘but it did not even leave the bowstring. Our next approach must be to the local inhabitants, as you suggested.’

  ‘There can’t be many of those. I’ve talked to the manager and, except for the people who run the motel and the restaurant and that scruffy good-pull-up-for-carmen along the road, the only birds who are more or less resident, he tells me, are a man called Carstairs and the Whites.’

  ‘And these are?’

  ‘The people in those villa residences up on the slope behind us. Carstairs is an artist and a bird of passage. White is a chap who runs a boat-hire business in Fort William.’

  ‘Let us have speech with these local in-habitants, then.’

  ‘Do we put our cards on the table?’

  ‘If you think that would be the best approach. I shall leave Mr Carstairs and the Whites to you while I tackle the motel and the holiday cottages. The lorry drivers’ café can come later.’

  ‘If we get no joy from the other places, you mean. Right. How would it be if I represented myself as Knight’s sorrowing sister, all bemused and bothered by his mysterious disappearance? I’ll get as close a description of him as I can from the people here, and then I’ll put on a Niobe act, shall I?’

  ‘Niobe wept for her children, not for her brother Pelops.’

  ‘I bet Carstairs and the Whites won’t bother about that. Anyway, there can’t be anything much to do here except watch the comings and goings at the hotel. I don’t wonder Carstairs is migratory. Greatly as I love my native land, I don’t think I could stick it in a place like this all the year round. It must be miserably dull for Mrs White. Carstairs, I’m told, is a bachelor and more often away than not, so he’s all right, I suppose, and White has his business in Fort William. Wonder whether Mrs White will talk to me? I daresay she will be glad of a good gossip.’

  ‘You had all this from the manager here?’

  ‘Yes, and from some of the maids.’

  ‘I suppose you did not find out what was in the suitcase which Knight left in his room?’

  ‘Yes, I did ask, as a matter of fact. There were his pyjamas, a light dressing-gown, his washing materials and a good navy-blue suit which the manager says he put on in the evenings.’

  ‘No spare underwear?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. A clean shirt and a pair of briefs, but that is the sum total.’

  ‘So, wherever he went —’

  ‘Looks as though he meant to come back, doesn’t it? I think we’re looking for another body.’

  ‘There could be other explanations, but that seems the likeliest at present.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Saighdearan, Place of Soldiers

  « ^ »

  White’s middle name was MacGregor. Laura learned this when she called at the bungalow. A woman answered the door.


  ‘Mr MacGregor White?’ she asked, when Laura enquired for him.

  ‘Well, yes, if it isn’t Mr Lamont White,’ said Laura, who had taken an instant dislike to the woman, who, from her accent, was English. ‘The Whites are almost bound to be one or the other, aren’t they?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I happen to be English.’

  ‘I wonder whether you can help me? I am trying to find out what has happened to the driver of a County Tours coach which pulled up at the hotel here a few days ago.’

  ‘Are you from the police? I have already answered their questions.’

  ‘I am connected with the Home Office and we have been authorised to make our own enquiries.

  ‘The Home Office?’

  Laura produced one of Dame Beatrice’s official cards.

  ‘This is my employer,’ she said. The woman read the card and opened the door wider.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, ‘although there is absolutely nothing I can tell you. I saw the coach you mean. It came in at about six in the evening and went off again next morning – to Skye, my maid tells me. Then it returned. That is all I know.’

  ‘You could see the coach from your windows?’

  ‘Come and look for yourself. Not that I have time to spare looking out of windows, I assure you.’

  There was a coach belonging to another tours company standing in the yard of the hotel. Laura had had a steep climb up a lane to reach the bungalow from the hotel, so the coach looked to be a long way below her and her main view was of its roof. It would be quite possible to see people getting in and out of it, she thought, but not so easy, perhaps, to give a clear description of them.

  ‘You have heard about the death of another driver who worked for the County Tours people, I expect,’ said Laura.

  ‘Not until the police came here. I do not bother with the papers and my husband never discusses the news with me.’

  ‘And nobody but the police came to your house to make enquiries?’

  ‘Well, not the kind of enquiries you mean. Besides, it was my husband’s business, not mine.’

  ‘About the hire of a boat?’

  ‘What else? Boat-hire is my husband’s livelihood.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘It can have nothing to do with this missing man.’

  ‘You mean he wasn’t the person who made the enquiry?’

  ‘Of course not. The only boat a coach-driver would be interested in is the ferry from Mallaig or Kyle of Lochalsh over to Skye. My husband lets out motor-boats and small yachts, or takes parties down the loch or across to Mull.’

  ‘So, if it wasn’t the driver, who was it? I assume that people usually hire from Fort William, not from this house.’

  ‘I have no idea who it was, but you are wrong in supposing that people do not hire from this house. We have an understanding with Mr MacDonald at the hotel. He takes a small percentage when he recommends any of the hotel guests to my husband.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. Do you know whether this particular man came from the hotel?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He was staying at the motel down the road, or so he said.’

  ‘Can you describe him to me?’

  ‘No, that I can’t. I didn’t see him. My husband mentioned him, that’s all.’

  ‘For any special reason?’

  ‘No, except that he said we did not often get enquiries for boats from the motel.’

  ‘Their clients being birds of passage, I suppose. Did your husband happen to mention whether the enquirer was an Englishman?’

  ‘He said he thought he was a foreigner.’

  ‘Your husband isn’t at home, of course?’

  ‘He is in his office down at the boatyard, as usual. This is near the end of our busy time of year.’

  ‘Do you know whether this man did actually hire a boat?’

  ‘I suppose he did. My husband didn’t say. I took it for granted that he did.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs White.’

  ‘I’ll see you to the door. My maid is out shopping for me in Fort William this morning.’

  Laura felt that Mrs White deserved some compensation for help which, however grudgingly, had at least been given and might be valuable, so she said:

  ‘Perhaps you won’t spread it about just yet – tell your husband, if you like, of course – but there has been a second murder. Another coach-driver belonging to the same company was found dead three or four days ago. That is why we are so concerned about this third driver and why my employer and I have been called in to make some enquiries. My employer is the psychiatric consultant to the Home Office and will be called to testify when we catch the murderer.’

  ‘You don’t mean he is this foreigner?’

  ‘Nobody knows – yet.’

  ‘Well!’ said Mrs White. ‘Well! To think we may have had a murderer in this very house!’

  ‘Oh, we mustn’t jump to conclusions, you know,’ said Laura. ‘All the same, I would very much like to speak to your husband and get a description of this foreigner. Can you tell me how to find his boatyard?’

  ‘No need,’ said Mrs White, now expansive, excited and genial. ‘He’ll be here for his lunch at half-past one. I’ll tell him to expect you at half-past two. That will give you time to have your own lunch, won’t it?’

  Laura, feeling she had misjudged the woman, returned cock-a-hoop to the hotel and then, as she reached the entrance, she remembered that she had not interviewed Carstairs. She decided to remedy this omission forthwith, but discovered that she might have saved herself a second climb up the hill. There was a notice, kept in place by a large stone, lying on the outside sill. No more until further notice, it read.

  ‘Bread or milk, no doubt,’ said Laura to herself. ‘Oh, well, lucky to get it delivered in a place this distance from the town. Wonder whether Carstairs went away before or after Knight and his coach got to the hotel?’

  She joined Dame Beatrice for lunch and at half-past two they climbed up to the Whites’ bungalow. Mrs White, all graciousness this time, admitted them and introduced her husband. MacGregor White was a plump, broad-featured man who looked as though he ought to be genial but who turned out to be taciturn and morose. No, he did not keep a register of those who hired his boats. He entered dates and payments, but not names. No, he did not remember a foreigner calling at the house on any particular day, but, if his wife said so, they could take her word for it. Yes, the police had questioned him about a missing coach-driver and little joy they had gained from it! During the summer months numbers of people hired boats and on the day in question he must have had several enquiries. He did not even answer all of them himself. His assistant might have taken some of the bookings. No, they could not speak to his assistant. It was so near the end of the season that he had laid him off, as usual, until the following summer.

  ‘It’s seasonal work, you’ll understand,’ he said, suddenly apologetic as he caught Dame Beatrice’s sardonic eye.

  ‘Well, where does he hang out when he’s not with you?’ asked Laura. Grudgingly White supplied this information. It turned out that the man, whose name was McFee, had a small shop in Portree on Skye.

  ‘Anyone will tell you,’ said Mrs White, shepherding Dame Beatrice and Laura to the door, ‘where it is. I’ve never been there myself.’

  ‘Portree?’ said Laura, as they walked down the slope towards the hotel. ‘That’s where the coach-party went before Knight disappeared, isn’t it? We might pick up something there, don’t you think? We know the hotel where they lunched. This might turn out to be our lucky strike. Besides, it’s a wonderful drive from here to Kyle of Lochalsh. Do we go first thing tomorrow morning? Too late for a jaunt like that today.’

  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 ornamental kilt-pins and a sgiàn 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?’