My suspicions were real. This man had been sent to kill me. This was enough proof to continue with the investigation, but I didn’t trust the captain to do the right thing; it was too much of an inconvenience for him. He’d already proven that he wasn’t interested in pursuing the case by not mentioning the suitcase and ruling the murder an accident. He wasn’t a detective or a private investigator. He would simply send these papers to someone else, papers that would end up collecting dust in someone’s cabinet. No, I didn’t want the British authorities to handle this. Who knew how many months (or years) that would take?

I slipped the envelope inside my sleeve.

I would have to find Cristóbal’s killer myself.

* * *

I didn’t tell Montse about the papers. She was affable, but she’d just proven to me that she couldn’t keep a secret. The first thing she’d done after the captain had asked for discretion was to come and tell me about the valise. Not that I wasn’t grateful for the information. Thanks to her, I’d found the first clue I needed to discover who was behind all of this, but I barely knew the woman. I couldn’t trust anybody.

I could hardly sleep that night. The little sleeping I did resulted in ghastly nightmares where I was either attacked by a group of men in the jungle or wandering by a cacao field in my camisole, lost. As I shifted positions in bed, the captain’s words kept echoing in my mind: “A journey of that magnitude could be quite dangerous for a woman traveling alone.”

I shivered just thinking about what might have happened to those missionaries the captain mentioned. If at least my final destination was Guayaquil, I could probably make it fine, but I knew nothing of Vinces or Ecuador’s geography. For all I knew, this assassin—because I was certain now that my assault had not been random—could’ve been hired by my father’s attorney. Only he knew I was coming and my arrival date. Cristóbal had mentioned the Valbanera in the telegram, and also the Andes, once we reached Cuba. For a moment, I contemplated the captain’s offer to return to Sevilla.

But what did I have left there? No family, no house, not even my chocolate shop. Everything had been sold. All my possessions lay in three trunks. I sat up and turned on my bedside lamp.

The trunks rested in a pile against the wall. I hadn’t given any thought to what I would do with Cristóbal’s earthly possessions. It would be a strain to carry his things across an unknown land for no real purpose, just sentimentality. I ought to give away his clothes to the third-class passengers.