Noonday and Night mb-51

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘But you had been to Saighdearan once before and you were able to give two of your party the names of the mountains they saw when the coach stopped for lunch on the shores of, I think, Loch Earn.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, yes, I forgot my first trip that way. Anyhow, I’d done my homework the night before. Always reckon to do that, you know. Never like to plead ignorant. Matter of professional pride, I suppose. Anything more you want to know about the trip?’

  He sounded jaunty and cocksure, but Dame Beatrice knew that he was uneasy and that his further account of the tour might be only partly true.

  ‘Nothing more about the tour,’ she said, ‘but I should like as clear and as detailed a description as possible of what happened after the party had returned from the day’s outing to Skye.’

  ‘Oh, ah, Skye. We had to wait a bit at Kyle of Lochalsh for the bigger boat to take the coach, you know. The trip passed off all right, although people would have liked to see a lot more of Skye than we had time for, and then—’

  ‘When you got back you were attacked?’

  ‘Yes, that was all of a rum go, that was. I thought my number was up, and that’s a fact. Third time unlucky, I guessed.’

  ‘Third time?’

  ‘Well, Noone and Daigh, you know. Both copped it, didn’t they? So when these two blokes broke into my bedroom just as I’d settled down to bone up on the next day’s run from Fort William to Perth, I reckoned I’d had it, just like the other two.’

  ‘Can you describe the men?’

  ‘Not really. They had nylon stockings over their heads. One I reckon was a spade.’

  ‘A black man?’

  ‘That’s right. They both were wearing gloves, but I caught a sight of a bit of bare brown wrist while they were gagging me and tying me up.’

  ‘Did you have no chance to raise the alarm?’

  ‘No chance at all. They come busting in and were on me and the gag in my mouth before I could let out a single, solitary yip.’

  ‘Were you fully dressed?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? Matter of fact, I was in trousers and shirt and my dressing-gown.’

  ‘Had you left your bedroom door open?’

  ‘No, of course not. One of them must have been on the staff of the hotel, I reckon, because he must have had a master-key to the rooms.’

  ‘Could you not have called out while they were stripping off your dressing-gown?’

  ‘Stripping off my dressing-gown? Look here, madam, what are you getting at?’

  ‘Oh, I took it for granted that they would have seen to it that you were fully dressed when they spirited you away. Tell me about that.’

  ‘I want to know what my dressing-gown has to do with it.’

  ‘I have told you.’

  ‘You haven’t the right to question me like this. All I’ve got to say I’ve said to the police.’

  ‘Very well. By the way, are you preparing to ask for compensation?’

  ‘Compensation?’

  ‘I have no authority to make promises on behalf of County Motors, of course, but it seems, from your story (and I do hope you will be good enough to continue it), that you have suffered physical injury and, I assume, unlawful captivity while employed upon the Company’s business.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, Mr Honfleur is a decent chap, so he’ll see I get my rights. As for unlawful captivity, well, you can say that again. They sat there in the room, me trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven excepting that I’d still got my guts inside me, although my heart, I don’t mind telling you, was just about in my boots, and then, when it was dark, which comes latish, as you may have noticed, as far north as that, they forced me, at knife-point, to get down the stairs and out into the open.’

  ‘So they had not tied your legs?’

  ‘They did, until they were ready for us to leave. Then this darkie pulled out a dirty great flick-knife and stood behind me and reached round and put it at my throat while the other chap untied my legs and told me to get moving. I had a shot at grabbing the darkie’s wrist and got his nasty snick on my neck.’

  ‘Your bedroom was in the three-storey wing, then.’

  ‘Yes, right at the top. I don’t think any of my passengers were near me. I believe they were all on the ground floor in the bungalow part of the building. Still, even if any of them had been handy, I wouldn’t have cared to risk a shout.’

  ‘And, in any case, you were gagged, you say. So you emerged into the front yard of the hotel. What happened then?’

  ‘They forced me into a car and drove me a few hundred yards down the road in the direction of Fort William. They took me into a big, empty house which looked about ready to fall down and kept me there.’

  ‘And, later, released you.’

  ‘That’s right, in a sense, I suppose.’

  ‘Did they feed you?’

  ‘Yes, with sandwiches from the lorry-drivers’ caff down the road and tea out of a thermos.’

  ‘What demands did they make?’

  ‘Demands? Nothing, except to tell them the exact route the coaches take to get back home from Perth. Well, there was no secret about that, so I told them. When I’d done and had answered several questions about the hotels we were accustomed to stop at, the nig hit me over the head and the next thing I knew I was walking into Mr Honfleur’s office here.’

  ‘With no idea of how you got back from Saighdearan?’

  ‘I suppose I must have thumbed lifts, but I’ve no recollection of it.’

  ‘But your memory has returned to you?’

  ‘Except for what happened between the knock on the head and me walking in on Mr Honfleur yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘What an interesting story! And you have no idea why you were abducted in this strange fashion?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘But you were able to leave this tumbledown house of your own volition.’

  ‘I must have, mustn’t I? But I can’t remember a thing about it.’

  ‘And there was no sign of these men?’

  ‘Neither hair nor hide.’

  ‘They had untied you, I assume.’

  ‘Must have done, mustn’t they?’

  ‘While you were at Saighdearan did you make contact with a man named Vittorio?’

  ‘Make contact? Me? No. Why should I?’ (But the question had rattled him.)

  ‘Only because I have some reason to believe that he was in the neighbourhood at the same time as you were. You know him, of course?’

  ‘Not to say know him. He came on my coach a year or two back to buy up some antiques or something of that sort, and I believe he used to go along with other drivers from time to time on the same sort of job, but I haven’t seen him around for a year or more.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Laura. ‘I was not going to read out my shorthand notes in front of Knight. He might have started thinking about his dressing-gown, which we happen to know was neatly packed and stowed away in his suitcase.’

  ‘His kidnappers may have tidy minds.’

  ‘The man is a liar of liars. His whole story is a fabrication and not a very clever one at that. All that boloney about a black man!’

  ‘The boy at the hotel mentioned a black man.’

  ‘Yes, but he meant Vittorio.’

  ‘I have suggested that to the police. No doubt they will have confirmed it by now.’

  ‘And Knight’s loss of memory which he claims happened after he was knocked on the head! What do you think he was up to during his so-called disappearance?’

  ‘Murdering Vittorio.’

  ‘Then he must be Carstairs!’

  ‘We have already decided that point, I think.’

  ‘Look, though, are we sure that Knight and Carstairs are not the same man? It would simplify things enormously if they were.’

  ‘No, no. Things are simple enough. The jigsaw is not a difficult one. It only remains for us to fit the pieces together in a manner which will convince a jury and that, at the moment, we a
re not in a position to do.’

  ‘You mean you know all the answers?’

  ‘So would you, if you would rid yourself of this yearning for Carstairs and Knight to be one and the same man. What about the descriptions we have had of both? We must accept evidence when it is provided by unbiased witnesses. I think there is no doubt, as you say, that Knight’s story is a fabrication, except in so far as the wound in his neck is concerned. I made him take the bandage off, as you know. The snick is neither deep nor dangerous, but it must have bled fairly considerably when it was inflicted.’

  ‘Yes, but by whom? Carstairs?’

  ‘Vittorio, I think, and then Knight killed him.’

  ‘So we are going on the assumption that Knight murdered Vittorio. But that looks as though Vittorio knew that Knight had murdered Noone and Daigh, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, not necessarily at all. To my mind it does not follow.’

  ‘But Knight has told us all those lies. Do you think he told Basil Honfleur the same story as he told us?’

  ‘Oh, probably. I would not call Knight a very inventive man.’

  ‘You don’t believe Knight killed the other two drivers, but you do think he murdered Vittorio. Why?’

  ‘Let us say that our jigsaw contains some extraneous pieces and that now we have to select the one piece which fits.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Conradda Mendel Speaks

  « ^ »

  So what’s the next move? Are you going to get the Scottish police to check Knight’s story?’ asked Laura.

  ‘They will do that without any hint from me, but I doubt whether they will be able to disprove it.’

  ‘It’s said that a negative is the most difficult thing in the world to prove. I mean, nobody at the hotel can say that Knight wasn’t gagged, bound and threatened with a flick-knife, and the fact that the hotel has four exits can’t be gainsaid. Besides that, the door by which he says he and those men left is at the foot of the stairs and under no supervision whatever. That’s another point in his favour, and I bet the police find plenty of faked evidence in that old house to show that Knight was dumped there. There will be a length of rope, plenty of crumbs and a thermos flask with his fingerprints on it, don’t you think?’

  ‘It is not at all unlikely.’

  ‘The police will spot that his story about being in his dressing-gown is phoney, won’t they, though?’

  ‘If he is pressed he will tell them that the men put him into his jacket and returned the dressing-gown to his suitcase. He will continue to plead loss of memory.’

  ‘What about his knowing that Daigh, as well as Noone, has been murdered? That news was carefully kept out of the papers until quite recently.’

  ‘He will say that the other drivers told him that Daigh had not returned to the depot and that another driver brought Daigh’s coach home. He will claim that, as he knew Noone had been murdered, he supposed that Daigh had met with a similar fate.’

  ‘Got it all taped out, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh, you are not the only innocent person who has a criminal’s mind,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘There is one thing I should like to know, though. In the beginning, when the directors of County Motors asked me to look into the matter of the missing coach-drivers, I felt that Basil Honfleur was not at all anxious that I should. When Knight was thought to have disappeared, however, who so anxious that I should search for him as our friend Honfleur, and I have found myself wondering how long he has known about this coming merger with the larger coach company and to what extent he fears for his position as managing director when the merger takes place, that is all. As we said before, he would not be the first man in an executive position to be made redundant.’

  ‘So you think he’s made himself a little escape route? But how?’

  ‘I do not know, but, as Mrs George de Home Vaizey, of whom you have never heard, once said, “Human nature is desperately wicked.” ’

  ‘What was she talking about?’

  ‘Strawberries and cream.’

  Laura, who did not trust her employer’s sense of humour, snorted disgustedly and changed the subject.

  ‘Wonder how Conradda Mendel is getting on, now she’s been mentioned,’ she said. As though she had invoked the spirit of the woman in question, on the following morning a letter arrived from Conradda herself.

  ‘So she didn’t go to America after all,’ Laura remarked as she sorted the correspondence and noted the postmark.

  ‘Who?’ Dame Beatrice enquired.

  ‘Conradda Mendel. She’s put her name, but not her address, on the back of the envelope and it’s postmarked Poole on the front.’

  ‘Interesting. Let us see what she has to say.’ Dame Beatrice slit open the envelope, scanned its contents and then handed the missive to Laura.

  ‘Dear Friend,’ Conradda had written, ‘before I go further, please do not show this to anybody but your most confidential secretary, as I do not wish it to be known to any but yourselves where I am to be found.

  ‘I became ill in America, but it is too expensive to be ill in that country, so I dragged myself on to an aeroplane and came to my own doctor and he ordered an operation, so here I am in convalescence in the house of a friend. I am getting stronger every day, but am not very well yet, so this is to ask if you will kindly visit me, as at the moment I am not able to travel to visit you.

  ‘Now it is about this coach-driver whose body was found in such a strange situation, and I am troubling myself in my mind that he may not be the only one.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t,’ said Laura, looking up from the letter. ‘Shall you go and see her?’

  ‘Read to the end. You will find that I have very little option.’

  ‘You will remember,’ the letter went on, ‘my telling you of the treasures of Chinese art which Vittorio showed me when I visited his lodging and of the conclusion I reached regarding this surprising and very valuable collection. I also mentioned, I believe, some jade that he had there. Well, jade is always nice; nice material and very patient carving is necessary and takes much time. The pieces he showed me, though, were not very special – jewellers’ pieces I would call them – and some were soapstone, not jade.

  ‘Mind, I did not let Vittorio know I recognised some of the china he showed me. That perhaps would not have been a safe thing to do; neither, naturally, did I intend to tell him I should advise you not to buy, but, with much caution, I began to make enquiries about him in the trade and some strange things came out.

  ‘Where County Motors go there are thefts of art treasures. Nobody makes the connection, I think, but me. Now here, now there, I hear of these thefts and because I know Vittorio and your Mr Honfleur are in collusion for Vittorio to purchase antiques – ’

  ‘Our Mr Honfleur indeed! ’ said Laura indignantly. ‘I like her cheek!’

  ‘She means no harm. Read to the end.’

  ‘… to purchase antiques, I ask myself whether this is coincidence or not. I check up the coach tours and it looks less and less like coincidence and more and more like something arranged. You see, my dear friend, when there is a theft the police are told. They cordon off roads and stop cars and perhaps lorries; but who ever heard of police stopping a holiday coach? Even if they did, what would they find? Thirty suitcases of innocent people; souvenirs bought to take home as gifts for friends or as reminders of the holiday; parcels, coats, anoraks and mackintoshes on the racks; everybody able to account for himself. All the same, I think to myself that there may also be one suitcase too many in the boot of the coach. You understand me?

  ‘But the police do not stop the coaches. In most cases they do not stop the cars either. And why? Because, by the time the thefts are discovered and reported, it is too late. The thieves have got clean away and the coach is staying, so innocently, at a hotel in another county, so nobody gives it a thought that there are stolen antiques on board.’

  ‘I wonder whether she’s right?’ said Laura, handing back the letter. ‘It sounds a bit to
o easy to me. Do you think she’s romancing?’

  ‘That is what I propose to find out.’

  ‘Do I go with you to Poole?’

  ‘Yes, I shall need you to take notes. We know already that Vittorio used to take these coach tours. The reason given to us was that he looked out for antiques to sell to Basil Honfleur for his collection of ceramics.’

  ‘Can’t quarrel with that, can we?’

  ‘On the face of it, no, except that Honfleur’s collection seemed rather too small to account for these elaborate journeys. Of course it could be that Honfleur was not the only collector on Vittorio’s list of customers. However, we may know more when we hear what Conradda Mendel has to tell us when we visit her.’

  ‘Considering that there’s already been an attempt on your life, I’m not so keen on this visit. Supposing Conradda is in cahoots with Knight and this letter is a trap?’

  ‘I shall look to you to protect me.’

  ‘I might not be able to protect you from a stab in the back. Vittorio was not the only person to be far too handy with a dagger, as witness his own demise, and, if I know anything of the address on Conradda’s letter, Poole harbour might be a nice handy dumping-place for a dead body.’

  ‘You make my blood run cold.’

  ‘Not half as much as you make mine curdle in my veins. Look here, how much do we really know about Conradda? Nothing, except that she was a patient of yours. People who need help from a psychiatrist are not always the most trustworthy of friends.’

  ‘You malign my profession and my clients, and in the same breath, too.’

  ‘Would you like to make me feel a lot happier?’

  ‘Your happiness is my chief concern.’

  ‘Right – although I know that was said tongue in cheek, I want our private dick to go with us to Poole. I don’t like this sudden summons from Conradda. We don’t know for certain that she ever went to America and we do know she had that peculiar linkup with Vittorio.’