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) 📕

Pauline said, “We need to get Rod on his own. I don’t know how, but we must.”

“Shouldn’t you interview him with Somerville? It might make Somerville confess to having already interviewed Rod.”

“Somerville is like a bull in a china shop,” Pauline said. “A man like Rod will not respond well to the detective’s style. I think we’ll do better without him.”

“But you will tell him, won’t you?” Freda asked. “The last thing we need is a feud with Somerville – or the captain deciding you’re untrustworthy.”

“I’ll tell them tonight, don’t worry. Then it will be too late for Somerville to pounce on Rod before we can.”

“The faxes you sent on Pedro Morales,” Somerville said, speaking loudly for the radio connection was fading, “I think there’s something wrong about Pedro.”

Hidalgo’s voice crackled over the faltering connection. “It’s true. The information we had when we hired him was that he was from Lima. The police have found that isn’t exactly true.”

Somerville snorted. “It’s barely true at all. He was born there, lived there until he was six but then lived the next twelve years in the village where Jose lived and which Jose betrayed, before returning to Lima only two years ago.”

“Yes,” Hidalgo said unhappily. “There may well have been a connection. Not that it would have changed our view of hiring him. Pedro had returned to Lima before the massacre and we had no reason to assume he knew or had a grudge against Jose. And we still don’t,” he added but even the static couldn’t hide the concern in his voice.

“Nor do we, Señor Hidalgo,” Pauline said. “It is just another puzzle. For a young man so apparently unconnected with anyone here, Jose seems to have been remarkably linked to many others. Pedro is the third person we’ve discovered with a possible link to Jose.”

“The other two were just angry incidents,” Somerville said. “This is deeper and, to my mind, has far more potential.”

“Possibly,” Pauline said, “but Jose is the only person on this ship to have two angry incidents in the very first afternoon. No one else had any. Jose seemed to invite or maybe just attract problems.”

“I feel we may have gotten a good lead, at last, and your theory may not be as wild as I’d first imagined, Miss Riddell.”

Pauline smiled. “You taking me seriously means a lot to me, Detective,” she said.

Somerville reddened. “You know what I mean,” he said. “I wasn’t being snarky.”

“Nor was I,” Pauline replied.

“Captain,” Somerville said, abruptly changing direction, “I think we need to talk to Pedro Morales right away. Tonight. I don’t think we should wait.”

“I’ll have him found and brought here,” Captain Ferguson said, lifting the phone.

Pedro was clearly uneasy. He twisted in the chair they’d placed before them and viewed the three, Ferguson, Pauline, and Somerville, with what looked like alarm.

“We aren’t the police, Pedro,” Captain Ferguson said. “We’ve just learned that you once lived in the village where Jose lived, though before the people were massacred. We hoped you might have known Jose or known something about him that would help us get to the bottom of this mystery.”

He paused, hoping the crewman would begin to speak. When he didn’t, Ferguson asked, “Did you know Jose before you and he joined the ship?”

“No, and I didn’t live in the same village. My father was schoolteacher at a village higher up the mountain. We were about five kilometers from where Jose said he lived.”

“So, did Jose say where he came from?” Pauline asked.

“Yes. He spoke more than once of the horrors he’d seen and his escape. He thought we should treat him differently because of what had happened to him. Personally, I think he boasted about what had happened.”

“I would have thought a refugee would want to forget the past,” Pauline said.

Pedro nodded. “I, and others, thought it strange as well.”

“He was a young man,” Somerville said. “While being afraid for his life at the time, after, he possibly thought it exciting and expected others to think so too. Did others think so?”

Pedro shook his head. “I think most who met him among the crew thought him foolish and a…” he struggled for a word.

“A braggart?” Pauline offered.

Pedro frowned. “I don’t know that word. Do you know machismo?”

The others nodded.

“Well,” Pedro said, “like that but without any reason for it. He was not a manly man and his machismo was false. I can’t explain better.”

“You didn’t like him?” Somerville asked.

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Was it only his wrongly assumed machismo or was there more?” Pauline asked.

Pedro shrugged. “I didn’t know him until we met the crew. I am a naturalist and not one of the technical or hospitality crew. I don’t say he picked a quarrel with me during the training, but it felt like he did. He made unpleasant comments about me to others, in my hearing.”

“Why was that?” Ferguson asked, “And why didn’t you alert one of the ship’s officers?”

Pedro’s expression turned even more sullen. “I didn’t know him, but he learned my father was a schoolteacher in the nearby village to his and I was a university graduate. Those two facts seemed to be enough for him to hate me. Those are the reasons he gave anyway.”

“But this dislike never led to violence, did it?” Pauline asked.

Pedro hesitated, and then said, “One evening, after the training sessions had ended for the day, he pushed me against a wall and punched me, trying to get me to retaliate. I didn’t. It made him even more contemptuous than before. I avoided him as much as I could after that.”

“There’s nothing in any of what you remember of your life near the village where Jose lived that could help us understand what happened to him?” Somerville asked.

“Nothing except I understand why it happened to him and not to someone else.”

“Then you think it was murder?” Pauline asked.

“Do not put words in my mouth,”