In 1899, American swells embarked upon the Grand Tour of Europe for one purpose--to marry offspring to a title. Of course, that’s not for hard-working newspaperwoman Jemmy McBustle. She has no fortune, but she does have a rich aunt who’s trying to tame a wayward son. What luck? Auntie Dee invites Jemmy. Because her boss is eager to get this porcupine in a punchbowl out of his hair, Jemmy becomes travel writer for the St. Louis Illuminator.

The crossing taxed Auntie Dee healthwise and otherwise. That’s why Jemmy’s Aunt Tilly, AKA the Caligula of Chaperones, declared that cold and rainy England would make her sister’s sickness worse. What Auntie Dee needed was spiritual healing--and what better time than the days leading up to Easter--the holiest days in the Christian calendar? The McBustle party made a sharp right turn away from the London social season and sailed for healthful, pious, sun-drenched Portugal. On the way, one of the refugees fleeing Cuba after the Spanish-American war was killed.

To the murder mix, add in a touch of Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, a secretive Asian Doctor, a freighter crew who are everywhere but on board, and Easter at a breathtaking religious site at Braga. All in a day’s work for a girl reporter? Not when she’s stalked by the ghost of Vasco daGama.