Noonday and Night (1977)

1977 Michael Joseph:

Called upon to probe the mysterious disappearance of two touring motor-coach drivers, Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley uncovers a racket which involves stolen antiques, smuggling and murder.

Later, a third driver is missing, but reappears to tell a tale which Dame Beatrice suspects is only partly true.  The story moves from a stately home in Derbyshire to a Cathedral town in West Wales and finishes in a loch-side hamlet not far from Fort William.  One slender clue leads to another until the drama is played out and the murderer named.

Coach-party addicts may be able to recognise the various locations and those who contemplate their first coach tour may be reassured by the fact that, according to the story, only the driver-couriers get murdered, never the passengers.

My review:

Coach tours have been used by Miss Mitchell before, in The Devil’s Elbow (1951), and so has antique smuggling, notably in The Dancing Druids (1948), both more than a quarter of a century before this tale.  When the coach-drivers, Noone and Daigh, disappear in Wales and Derbyshire, Dame Beatrice is asked to investigate, and, Laura Gavin in tow, begins an odyssey which culminates in the discovery of something nasty on the gate-house roof, a rather improbable hiding-place.  Despite the busyness of travelling, the book is rather leisurely in pace, with two many interviews with possible witnesses, although the second half, which contains both Laura’s adventures in Scotland and the burglary with murderous intent of the Stone Cottage, is quite entertaining.  The characters, however, are flat, and, due to the small number of suspects (two), the murderer’s identity is obvious from the beginning (although his character is not at all) – thankfully, the villain is a central character, a relief from the arbitrariness of many late Gladys Mitchell novels, with two excellent clues, one about Commandos, the other about the coach-drivers’ moving the bus.  The solution, however, is extremely muddled and rather illogical.

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