Cruising for Murder: Myrtle Clover #10

Chapter Six

Despite the late hour she'd turned in, Myrtle set an alarm to get up extremely early. It was the day they were going through Glacier Bay and she'd heard that you had to be up and about early to get a decent window seat on the ship.

She was sure that Miles would also want a good seat so she tapped on his stateroom door. And tapped again. A few minutes later, quite a few minutes, a bleary-eyed Miles opened the door.

"Sleeping?" asked Myrtle, surprised. "What about the glaciers?"

Miles disappeared for a moment and returned to thrust a jacket at Myrtle.

"What's this for?" Myrtle demanded.

"It's my stand-in," said Miles.

"You want me to reserve you a seat with your jacket? That's hardly fair, is it?" asked Myrtle.

"I think it's only unfair when one is reserving three or more," said Miles. "Fewer than three is completely fair and even desirable. Especially when one is trying to catch up on sleep."

"Is your stand-in any good at investigating murder?" asked Myrtle.

But Miles was already stumbling back into his room.

Myrtle grumbled under her breath. Then she quickly smiled as she spotted their cabin steward. Perhaps he was also Celeste's steward and had seen something unusual last night.

"Arvin?" she asked.

"Good morning," he said cheerfully as he carefully placed a list of daily activities in the slot beside each cabin door. "Need some help?"

"I do, yes. I suppose you know about the tragedy that happened last night," said Myrtle briskly.

But the mention of the tragedy seemed to make Arvin very uncomfortable. He looked away and his bright smile faded a little. "Not much. I don't know much about that," he said. A wrinkle of concern lined his forehead.

It appeared the ship was already in the process of ensuring there was no bad publicity resulting from Celeste's death. How tiresome. "You don't really have to know much about it, Arvin, I only want to know if you saw or heard anything unusual last night."

Now he did look her directly in the eye. "Nothing. I saw nothing, madam. I knock on the door to turn down the bed and the lady tells me not now."

Myrtle said, "So you were the steward for the lady who died?"

Arvin appeared very uncomfortable again at the mention of death, but nodded. "I was the steward for her, yes. And I saw and heard nothing."

"All right. Thank you, Arvin," said Myrtle, disappointed.

"Okay to clean, madam?" he asked.