“No. I told you he doesn’t know I know it. I found his passport. He has taken Mariposan nationality.”

“So that’s where he went to! I made enquiries, but I never dreamed of him doing that.”

“You made enquiries?” Skye asked. “How? When? Why? No, don’t answer me now. I have to tell Captain Maclean to take us back to Mariposa. Don’t you see, he has to be there – now Alejo’s dead?”

As she turned to go, something in Jimmy’s bewildered expression struck her as pathetic.

With a little laugh she put her hand up and touched his cheek.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not mad or drunk or any of the things you are imagining. I think, although I am not sure, that I am happy – perhaps for the first time in my whole life!”

Chapter 14

Jimmy was still sitting under the awning on deck when Skye came hurrying back to him.

“We are returning to Mariposa immediately,” she said. “I have not been able to tell El Diablo yet, because he is asleep, but Evans will let me know as soon as he wakes up.”

“What is this all about?” Jimmy asked. “How did you meet this man and why is he here?”

“I will answer your questions later,” Skye replied evasively, “but tell me first what you know about Guy Tremayne.”

“I cannot really credit that we are talking about the same person,” Jimmy replied, “but so far as my story is concerned it is simple enough. A distant cousin of mine, Pauline Donaldson, married Sir Rupert Tremayne a few years before the war. She was his second wife and, while she was nearly thirty when she married, he was in his late fifties.”

“Was she fair?” Skye asked.

“Yes,” Jimmy replied. “Why?”

“Never mind,” Skye answered.

She had discovered the identity of the woman in the photograph.

“She was both fair and pretty,” Jimmy went on. “She was what was called a Society beauty and had a great success in London. A large number of people fell in love with her, including myself.”

“Oh, Jimmy, I had no idea. Is that why you never married?” Skye asked.

“Perhaps,” he answered. “But my feelings are not of any importance except that they enabled me to understand a little of what Guy Tremayne suffered when she married his uncle.”

“He was in love with her?” Skye asked.

“Tremendously in love, I believe. He met her when he was eighteen. Pauline was much older and led him up the garden path, as she had led so many young men one way or another. She was one of those strange complex characters who like to have men madly crazily in love with them, but who are prepared to give nothing in return. From my own experience of Pauline I would swear on the Bible, if need be, that she had always been strictly moral.”