It's Murder, On a Galapagos Cruise: An Amateur Female Sleuth Historical Cozy Mystery (Miss Riddell C by P.C. James (easy novels to read txt) 📕

and zoom lenses were capturing pictures of nesting birds on the cliff face and seabirds high above, as they wheeled and swooped against the brilliant blue sky. It was a moment to remember.

As they returned along the cliff face, they saw their more adventurous fellow travelers snorkeling among the sharp up-thrust rocks, where the ever-present, garishly colorful Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttled about hoping for their next meal. Pauline and Freda weren’t strong swimmers so just watching the snorkelers being lifted up by the sea onto rounded peaks of waves before sliding down into deep troughs of dark water made them feel queasy.

“I’m glad I wasn’t tempted by that,” Freda said, as a particularly large swell lifted the boat and then sank it down. “It’s bad enough in the boat.”

“Maybe you don’t feel it so much when you’re actually moving with the water,” Pauline said, with more hope than conviction.

“My plan is never to find out,” Freda said. “That water looks black; the bottom is so far away.”

“A bit how my brain feels, to be honest,” Pauline said quietly. “I know we’re looking at a murder but I don’t yet see who or how.”

“Oh, that,” Freda said. “I’d forgotten.”

“It is a lovely teashop, isn’t it?” Freda said, back onboard and looking around the corner of the ship’s principal lounge area. “They make it very homey with just a few screens between the pillars. You’d never think it was one big open space really.”

Pauline followed Freda’s gaze. It was true. This open area was used in many different ways throughout the day on the ship. It was a small ship so space was at a premium.

“It is nicely done,” Pauline agreed, “and I do love a teashop.”

Freda sensed her sister wasn’t as thrilled by the surroundings as she was. “You don’t like it?”

“I like it,” Pauline said. “They could hardly do better when there’s no place for a cozy, separate room. But like everything in today’s world, it’s a facsimile of the real thing and that always makes me uncomfortable.”

Freda nodded. “I know what you mean, but they mean well.”

“I’m sure they do, dear,” Pauline said, smiling. She looked again at the menu. Two pages of passionately described coffees and half a page of various exotic teas, none of which sounded particularly appealing. She sighed. A server approached and Pauline looked up.

“What can I help you with today?” the server asked.

“Hello again, Maria,” Pauline said. “You have a busy time of it. Cleaning cabins in the mornings and serving in the ship’s restaurants the rest of the day.”

“We do many different things throughout the day,” Maria said. “We have to. There’s so much to do and we have quite a small staff.”

“At least that must keep things interesting,” Freda said.

“It does and I’m never bored. We’re never without something to do,” Maria replied. “I like that.”

“I can imagine,” Freda replied. “That’s what I loved about nursing, in the beginning.”

Pauline decided it was time to re-direct the conversation before Maria was given Freda’s life history.

“I’d like English Breakfast tea, with milk, and one of those small macaroons I saw as we walked in.”

Freda said she’d have the same and Maria left.

“Maria seems nice,” Freda said.

“Their livelihoods depend on them being nice, Freda dear,” Pauline said. “As do their tips.”

“You’ve cruised before and become cynical,” Freda said. “For me this is a new experience and having everyone we meet smiling and being pleasant is wonderful. It doesn’t happen enough in life, in my experience anyway.”

Pauline watched the others arriving to take the tables around them. They were uniformly old and plump, as the people were on the other cruises she’d taken. All the eating and drinking didn’t bode well for their future health but maybe they were just doing what any sensible person would do at the end of their life – enjoy themselves. After all, she thought, no one gets out of here alive, as some sad pop singer had said not so long ago – before killing himself through the usual unpleasant lifestyle they imagined they were enjoying.

“You seem lost in thought,” Freda said as Maria was returning with their pots of tea and pastries.

“I was a bit,” Pauline said. “Murders always give me gloomy thoughts. But now we have tea to put all that right.”

“Tea does soothe and calm, doesn’t it?” Freda said, as she waited for Maria to place the many items she was carrying on her tray onto the table.

“It does and I think history proves it,” Pauline said when Maria was gone.

“History?”

“Yes, history. It may sound a grand theory born out of a humble cuppa but our empire was created by coffee drinkers in the 1700s and ended with tea drinkers in the 1900s. Coffee makes people aggressive and energetic. Tea makes people calm and restful. You can’t build or keep an empire by being calm and restful.”

Freda laughed. “You were always the one for wild flights of fancy,” she said.

“When some learned professor writes a book about it to great acclaim, before you’re impressed by his great learning, remember you heard it first from me.”

During lunch, while the ship sailed from Punta Vicente Roca to Fernandina Island, Captain Ferguson had invited the ship’s three Peruvian crewmen to meet with the detectives. They sat in a semi-circle with their interpreter alongside staring impassively at Pauline and Somerville.

“So,” Somerville said, after Captain Ferguson had asked them to outline their own personal histories as it related to the voyage, “none of you knew the victim before you joined the ship. But did you talk with him during your training?”

“I did,” one of the men said.

“Me also,” said a second. The third shook his head.

“Did he tell you anything about himself that might help us?” Pauline asked, and waited while the interpreter translated.

The men shook their heads.

“Nothing at all?” Somerville asked.

One of the two men began to speak. The translator said, “He said he was a refugee from the south and he’d had a horrible life.”

“Are any