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) 📕

looked as if he’d cut it himself. His sour expression took a turn for the worse when the Toronto detective said, “Your forgotten passport did us no favors, Arvin.” The stress on ‘forgotten’ was warranted for Mr. Weiss had it in his pocket the whole time, as it turned out.

“I missed it, okay? So, what! The driver didn’t need to make such a big deal out of it but I knew he would the moment I saw him. He’s an Arab and hated me because he could see I was Jewish.”

“Arvin,” the whole table seemed to call out in unison, before the detective said, “The coach driver’s name was Ernesto Lopez, it was on his badge and on the certificate above the windshield. He was Mexican and he was angry because you were fifteen minutes late to the coach and then you went back for the passport you thought you’d left in the hotel.”

“What’s it to him if he’s late. I’m the paying passenger, he’s the driver.” Arvin’s face grew quite pink in his agitation.

“The delay meant we’d missed the opportunity to avoid the rush hour traffic, which put the driver in considerable difficulty trying to catch up time on a busy road,” Rod Chalmers growled.

Pauline thought he seemed equally as angry as the driver had been. Arvin, however, would have none of it and the squabble continued to burst out during the meal. Pauline sincerely hoped Arvin would find a different table for the rest of the voyage or even fall overboard on the first night. She hadn’t enjoyed the coach trip either and for that too she blamed Arvin.

The detective, Jason, was eager and opinionated on every topic that was discussed, not at all what people expected of Canadians. His fingers constantly thrummed the table in his apparent inability to be still. He spoke in the same way, bursting into conversations with blunt statements that brooked no opposition or discussion.

When Freda was unwise enough to tell the other guests she was from England, and Pauline now lived in Toronto, Somerville practically pounced.

“Where in Toronto,” he demanded, in a voice Pauline was sure didn’t bring out the best in anyone he was interrogating.

“High Park,” Pauline said, “and you?”

“Oh, nowhere so grand,” he replied. “Leaside. I grew up there. Do you know it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr. Somerville,” Pauline said. “I go out so little. The Eaton Centre, Yorkville and Hazelton Lanes are the limit of my exploring.”

“Yorkville’s great, isn’t it?” Somerville said.

“You’re a young man,” Pauline said, “and would naturally enjoy it. I enjoy the liveliness but find the clothes don’t suit me so much.” She smiled to show she wasn’t being too serious.

Realizing they were beginning to silence everyone else in this exchange, Pauline said, “I think you must be from Ontario as well, Mr. and Mrs. Brandt?”

The conversation moved on in desultory fashion and Pauline was very conscious of the young detective’s regular speculative glances in her direction, as though trying to remember her. She was pleased when, after the dessert, he leapt out of his seat, declined the coffee and declared it time for a night cap, an oddly old-fashioned phrase for one so young. He headed straight for the bar at the end of the lounge where he joined a group of men loudly discussing football.

The Mennonite couple stayed on after the others had left and it gave Pauline an opportunity to learn more about this Christian sect of which she knew so little. Few outside their communities in Canada and the USA did know much about them though there was plenty of speculation. Their formal manners and language pleased Pauline who’d found the world since the beginning of the Sixties a disappointing and disturbing place.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Pauline said, “how do two Mennonite folks come to be outside their own world and aboard a ship of such unserious people?”

Isaac replied, “We’re part of a reformed group who don’t abjure all modern inventions or customs.”

“You’ll see plenty of new customs on the ship over the next ten days,” Pauline said wryly. “I know I was shocked the first time I went on a cruise.”

Ruth smiled. “Our mutual faith and support will help us survive the modern Western World,” she said.

While Ruth was speaking, there was a definite smile in Isaac’s eyes, though his expression remained neutral, and Pauline guessed they were gently teasing her, which in itself made them the best of their dinner companions of the evening.

After dinner, Freda and Pauline wrapped up warmly and walked the deck under the stars. It was surprising how cold the night air was at sea on the Equator. MS Orillia was an old ship of the sort Pauline had seen many times in harbors up and down England’s east coast. The brochure said it had been built for the Far Eastern trade at the end of the Second World War but, when that trade never recovered, it had been converted to a cruise ship and sailed the Mediterranean until this last year when it had been refurbished to sail this remote part of the world. It almost smelled new, Pauline thought, or maybe that was the scent of the tropical sea that lay all around. Despite the Orillia’s age, here under the Milky Way glowing in a great arc across the sky, and the almost full moon that cast a silver lane from horizon to ship, the ship looked ethereally beautiful in her newly painted white livery.

When she was sure nobody was about, Freda said quietly, “I do hope we get a different table for dinner tomorrow night.”

Pauline laughed. “You too?” she said. “Really, I could murder that silly man Arvin.”

“The other one, Rod, wasn’t much better,” Freda said. “He snapped at everything anyone said with such cutting, unpleasant comments.”

“I wonder why Arvin even came?” Pauline said. “He says he can’t stand the heat, felt too unwell to eat anything at dinner and wasn’t sure he would ever be able to eat anything because