It's Murder, On a Galapagos Cruise: An Amateur Female Sleuth Historical Cozy Mystery (Miss Riddell Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by P. C. James

  “Maria,” Pauline said, as the server emerged from the kitchen area with a tray of croissants.

  Maria placed the tray on a table and removed the empty one she was replacing. She walked to where Pauline was waiting.

  “Yes?” She asked.

  Pauline hesitated. “I can’t approve of what you did,” she said, “but I will take your secret with me today. I wish you all the happiness you can have in your life. Goodbye. God bless.”

  With that, she turned abruptly and walked away leaving Maria gazing sadly at her retreating figure.

  “Well?” Freda demanded, when she was allowed into Pauline’s cabin.

  “Well, what?”

  “As half this detective team I want to know what you told the captain.”

  “You quit the team, if you remember, but I will tell what I told him. He need have no fears arising from this incident.”

  “You didn’t tell him about Maria?”

  “It goes against everything I hold dear,” Pauline said, “but I think this may be the one instance I’ve ever met where justice has been served without the law’s involvement. Maria has justice and, I believe, in his own way, so has Jose, or whatever his name was. Now let’s go. I never want to see this ship or these people again.”

  “Why? What have they done?”

  “Nothing,” Pauline said. “It’s what I’ve done that makes it impossible for me to meet them again.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself, Polly. No one would have handed Maria over to the police.”

  “I’m not no one and I believe in the law and its importance for the safety of us all. You’re happy at my decision; I’m glad of that. But, I am not and I will live with what I’ve done forever.”

  “What made you think it was Maria, Polly?” Freda asked, as they sat on their hotel’s terrace in the bright sunshine overlooking one of Quito’s quieter parks.

  It was the first time they’d been alone that day. The disembarkation had been orderly but busy with people and the leave-taking noisy. The coach ride back to Quito had been quieter, everyone feeling that letdown that comes at the end of every trip. The coach dropped each group at their hotels and the goodbyes now were weary ones. Pauline and Freda were among the last to be dropped off but there were still too many passengers to talk safely.

  “The first moment was when you asked her if she knew Jose from before and she didn’t answer.”

  “She did,” Freda said.

  “No, she didn’t. She shook her head. A person like Maria couldn’t actually say a lie but she could shake her head. Many people are like that.”

  “But she told us about what he’d done.”

  “Yes. She had to or we would have been suspicious of her agitation over the questions.”

  “And that was it?”

  “It was the first suspicion I had we were wrong about Jose. Then Pedro said Jose pretended machismo but was not a manly man and I thought of the people Jose had quarrels with, Arvin, Pedro, Rod, and Maria.”

  “But Arvin quarreled with Jose, not the other way around.”

  ‘Possibly but Arvin didn’t wear his glasses. What if Jose had been stealing his bag from his room and Arvin had been wrongly persuaded it was all a mistake?”

  “But Pedro and Rod? How could they be involved?”

  “Jose was a man who sniffed out weaknesses and attacked them without mercy. I’m sure he heard Rod speaking Spanish to one of the crew, heard the discrepancy and saw an opportunity for blackmail. And poor Pedro was even more at risk. I’m sure Jose knew Pedro’s weakness from long before and again saw the opportunity for gain.”

  “But if Maria had gone to the captain, he’d have been found out,” Freda said.

  “Jose had only to go to the captain first and say it was Maria who’d led the guerillas to the village that day. We may have believed Maria over him but it would be hard to prove otherwise. He wasn’t a ‘manly man’, to use Pedro’s words, but he was cruel and audacious. I suspect in the end, it would be Maria who broke first.”

  “But none of these things say Maria did it,” Freda said.

  “On their own, each one was as unproveable as the evidence against our suspects in Jose’s death. But together, I saw a pattern, not a series of random chances, and people – people with weaknesses, ripe for exploitation. From that, I saw a different Jose.”

  “I still don’t see why Maria and not the others.”

  “Do you remember the first time we met Maria?”

  “Not really.”

  “I noticed and mentioned her name badge said she was from Peru. She was quick to say she now lived in Ecuador and added ‘among good people’. I thought it an odd thing to say. I live in Canada now but I don’t think Britons are not ‘good people’ and Canadians are better.”

  “It was just her way of saying how much she liked her new home,” Freda protested.

  “I thought that too, until everything we thought we knew began to shift.”

  “But you were still guessing he’d done something to Maria, personally I mean.”

  “And if it was only what I suspected I would have given my suspicions to the police. It was the horror of what she told us and her offer to show her scars to prove it that, in the end, decided me.”

  “What if Maria had denied all of it.”

  “Then my decision would have been a much harder one to make, for I was sure I was right.”

  Freda shuddered, though the evening was warm.

  “I like what you do even less, now,” she said.

  “This case has opened my eyes too,” Pauline said. “Now, I’m going to have an early night. It’s been a long day and I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “With your conscience, I’m surprised you ever sleep at all,” Freda said, rising from her chair and following her sister into the hotel.

  Pauline didn’t reply. In her mind, she saw Jose letting go of Maria’s arms and trying to escape the knife under his chin while reaching for the solid railing. Could he have been forced far enough back by the knife to lose his balance? Or when he tottered on the gate, hanging between this world and the next, did Maria flip his legs up and achieve her justice. On balance, pardoning the pun, Pauline thought it didn’t matter to her decision. She had no doubt that, had Jose lived, Maria would not have survived that night. He couldn’t risk her staying silent for the whole voyage.

  A week later Pauline said goodbye to Freda at Toronto Pearson Airport.

  “You will come home next year, won’t you, Polly?”

  Pauline nodded. “Of course, and we’ll have a family re-union at the Raven Hall Hotel. You’ll organize it. Get everyone together.”

  “I’d like that,” Freda said. “We don’t see the boys as much these days. Not since mum died.”

  “Mothers keep families together, it’s true.”

  The line at the departure gate had gone and the staff were giving Freda ‘that look’.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I don’t like leaving you here all alone, Polly. Look after yourself.”

  “I’m not alone,” Pauline said. “I have colleagues at work and new friends in the neighborhood. And if I get lonely, I can call you on the phone at any time or be home with you all in a few short hours, thanks to the magic of jet travel. Have a great flight, Freddie.”

  Pauline watched Freda exit down the tunnel, waving as she went, before making her own way back to her car. Her sister’s words had hit a nerve. One that had been jangling since that last morning on the ship. Her life, her real life, had been solving the puzzles that had come her way. Her job had always felt secondary to that. Helping people to get justice had been her passion and her whole reason to be. And now it was gone. Murdered by her betrayal of her own principles. What right did she have to hold others to laws that she was prepared to flout when the occasion arose?

  She sat in the car staring at the rows of vehicles parked in the garage. Surely, she thought, her self-disgust would pass soon and she could begin investigating again? S
he started the engine and drove out into the sunlight. She felt she’d betrayed herself and she must never investigate again for she could not be sure she wouldn’t choose to follow her feelings instead of the rule of law. Once you start down that path, it becomes simply vigilantism. That life, it seemed, which had sustained her through the long, lonely years as Stephen’s ‘widow’, felt over.

  It was strange to be thinking of Stephen again so vividly. It was this case and how it felt like that first one. A sudden faint smile came to her lips when she remembered the letter she’d received at the end of that first case, asking for her help. In a way that’s how it all began. Not with Marjorie’s murder but with the letter from Mrs. Elliott. If she’d never received that letter when she did, she would never have become ‘Miss Riddell’ and all that entailed.

  Her smile deepened. Today’s mail hadn’t arrived before she’d driven Freda to the airport. Could history and the mail service repeat itself? For the first time in days, she felt herself awakening, hope rising and the belief she still had a role to play returning. There would be a letter, she just knew it.

  The End

  (of this book anyway)

  Polite Request

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  Bonus Content

  Here’s an excerpt from my next book in the series, A Murder for Christmas

  North Riding of Yorkshire, England, Christmas 1962

  Pauline Riddell gritted her teeth and stared out of the window. The afternoon looked like it would be more snow by the time they were returning home. Maybe, the Land-Rover with its four-wheel drive was the better choice for this journey. As it bumped over the frozen, rutted farm road, however, jarring every bone in her body, she found that little comfort. And imagining the drive back to her parents’ farm, gave her the shudders.

  At the manor, an old-fashioned stone-built house that hadn’t been upgraded in any of the architectural styles of the past four hundred years (and was all the better for it, in Pauline’s opinion) she met Frank Thornton, the soon-to-be lord of the manor. Or at least that was what had been expected until the family solicitor had hurried up to the manor on the death of Frank’s father only two days ago with some disastrous news.

  “So, you see, Miss Riddell,” Frank Thornton said, “we’re in a pickle.”

  “Let me get this clear in my mind,” Pauline said. “Your father has been training you up to take over the estate all your life. He never suggested any other course of action was being considered?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “The Will has been lodged with the Family Solicitors for decades, since your older brother was killed in World War 2, in fact. No one else has had access to it?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And the Will, so far as everyone understood, named you as the heir to the estate and your younger brother, Anthony, would have had an annual remittance?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But when your father died, the solicitor drew the Will from the safe, preparing to bring it to read out after the funeral, he found that it named Anthony as heir and gave you a single bequest of five hundred pounds?”

  “That’s it?”

  “The solicitor called you and has agreed to hold off reading the Will until an investigation could be made.”

  “Yes, and the Police came, listened to what we had to say and took the Will to check for fingerprints and for forged signatures,” Frank Thornton said.

  “Which they’ve done now and say it is in order. The signature is your father’s and the Will is genuine?”

  “Exactly. The Will, they say, looks genuine enough and it stands,” Thornton said.

  “Aye,” Alan said, breaking in on the tale, “but the difficulty is Tony Thornton wants to sell the land to the highest bidder, developers to be precise.”

  Pauline looked at Frank Thornton for confirmation.

  He nodded. “My brother is a man who likes his life in London, Paris, St. Tropez and all those places the rich and idle go. Only, he can’t really afford it on his present income. This lovely old estate and all the farms will be gone in a heartbeat, if this Will stands, for he’ll sell to the highest bidder.”

  “You’re quite sure your father didn’t change the Will?” she asked, looking him squarely in the eye.

  “I’m sure he did not,” Thornton replied, “and so is our solicitor. He’s as distraught over this as we all are. Somehow the Will was changed and we have to prove it.”

  “You and your solicitor do realize, I suppose, that the only people who could have altered the Will must work in the Solicitor’s Office?”

  Thornton hesitated before saying, “Naturally, we thought of that but it isn’t possible. John Ogilvie, his father and his grandfather have been the Thornton family solicitors for almost a century. They hold that position of trust because they are eminently trustworthy. It is impossible to imagine anyone in their office doing such a thing.”

  “How else could it be done, then?” Pauline said, incredulous of the blind, willful obstinacy of such a statement.

  “Alan says you have found many amazing solutions to problems before. Indeed, even I have heard of your successes. We hope you will be able to show how this was done and exonerate the Ogilvies of any wrongdoing.”

  “This is a matter for the Police,” Pauline said.

  “The Police have already stated that the Will is genuine and there’s no case to be investigated. Indeed, they practically accused me of trying to overturn the Will because I was upset at being cut out.”

  “If the Will is genuine, as their experts proved, then that is the only conclusion to be drawn,” Pauline said. She held up her hand to prevent the angry outburst she could see about to begin, and continued, “If the Will is false, as you and the lawyer say, then it can only have been falsified in the Solicitor’s Office. Unless they can show it was elsewhere at some time and they failed to check it hadn’t been tampered with while outside their care, which isn’t much of an improvement in their culpability, frankly.”

  “I don’t like the tone of this,” Thornton said. “Alan said you could help us but all I’m hearing is slanderous remarks about an honest man and his family’s firm.”

  Pauline shook her head. “Then get a Private Investigator who will pander to your sensitivities. The answer to this will be bad for someone and pretending that it isn’t one of the Thornton or Ogilvie families won’t help you.”

  Frank Thornton’s expression was thunderous but, with a visible effort, he said, “I thought you were a Private Investigator.”

  “I investigate puzzles privately and people do pay me for assisting them but I’m not in the business of Private Investigator. I take cases where people want the truth and, where appropriate, justice. Neither of these things appear to be wanted here.”

  “That’s not true. Everyone here knows my father’s wishes and this Will doesn’t reflect those wishes. He would never have left the estate to Tony who is a scoundrel and a leech. Our father knew exactly what would happen to the estate he loved if it should ever fall into Tony’s hands.”

  That gave Pauline a thought. “Could this be simply a prank by your brother? Knowing how you and your Father thought of him, could he have substituted the Will just to make mischief?”

  “This is no prank, Miss Riddell,” Thornton said. “My brother outruns his allowance every month and is constantly asking me for more money. He’s sold almost everything that had been handed down to him that he could sell. This is the act of a desperate man who intends to ruin dozens of lives in order to keep living a life far beyond his means to enjoy.”

  “Did he have something handed down?”

 
; “He had the bulk of our mother’s funds,” Thornton said. “It was understood that I, as the first born, would have the estate and so he got the bulk of mother’s money. He has spent it all, thousands of pounds wasted on drink, drugs and, well, let’s say parties.”

  “What Mr. Thornton says is true, Pauline,” Alan said. “Everyone hereabouts will vouch for that. Last time he came up here, two years ago now, the goings on there, scandalized the whole neighborhood. He still has the old Dower House, you see.”

  “Mr. Thornton, I understand your feelings and,” Pauline said, turning to Alan, “those of your tenants and the village at large but, I repeat, if you want to know the truth of this, you must allow an investigator to expose whoever has done this, even if it means inside your household or the Ogilvie Law Office. There can be no other way.”

  “I refuse to believe it is anyone we know or have known these past years,” Thornton said.

  “Then you should have no reason to refuse to have a proper investigation. Indeed, when you’ve thought about it further, you’ll see that by not investigating properly you leave suspicion hanging over your household and the Ogilvie office. Would Mr. Ogilvie be against a thorough investigation?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t we ask him?”

  Thornton frowned as he struggled with the idea of calling the family’s loyal solicitors and suggesting such a thing while desperate for an answer that made sense before the estate and its people were destroyed.

  “I will phone John and do my best to suggest it without destroying their confidence in me,” he said at last.

  “They work for you,” Pauline said, her years of dealing with boardroom quarrels, and the Board’s conflicts with suppliers, was outraged by the antiquated notions his speech suggested.

  “Miss Riddell,” Thornton said, “in the world where you work, that may be considered a sharp thing to think but here in the real world we value mutual relationships. We pay them for specific services it’s true and in return they provide wide loyalty and support when we need it.”