‘Tell me,’ said Cedric Dillworthy, ‘does your cousin really inhabit a palazzo on the Grand Canal? You have never mentioned it before.’ The professor’s thin voice held the merest hint of scepticism.
‘Well not quite on the Grand Canal,’ his friend Felix answered, ‘though as near as dammit – a little tributary you might say.’
‘You mean some backwater?’
‘No, I do not mean some backwater. I mean exactly what I say, a particularly charming canal in sight of the Grand one. The place is by a small bridge and has its own landing stage, thus one does not have to hike suitcases all over the place. Were we to go there you would find that a great blessing.’
‘Doubtless. But I still do not understand why you have never spoken of this cousin or indeed ever mentioned Venice. Rome yes, but never Venice.’ The scepticism had sharpened.
Felix gave a pained sigh. ‘I have never mentioned Cousin Violet because she is ancient, testy, and I barely know her. Neither do I know Venice; a large lacuna in my education no doubt, but which I trust will be shortly filled.’
‘Yet you seem very familiar with the location of the palazzo.’
‘Because it was in the bloody photograph she sent! Now, do you want to come or not?’
Cedric took a reflective sip of a very dry martini and contemplated the cat sprawled at his feet. ‘Are you sure she won’t be there? I can’t say I relish being at the beck and call of an ancient irascible even if she does live in decaying splendour; bad enough having to play lackey to the basset hound.’
‘No of course she won’t be there! That’s the whole point of our being invited. I keep telling you – to guard the basset while she gads about in Chicago. The person she usually parks it with has had a fall or something and the backstop has bowed out at the last minute. Hence recourse to yours truly: any port in a storm I suppose … A bit of luck really. Just think, three weeks in the heart of Venice and all for free!’
‘You forget the penalty,’ Cedric observed mildly.
‘What penalty?’
‘The dog of course.’
‘Oh that won’t be any trouble. A daily stroll and the occasional bone should do the trick. Minimum of exercise, they have short legs that type.’
‘Supposing it doesn’t understand English?’
‘Bound to be bilingual. Just like the gondoliers I expect. Oh, and speaking of whom, I rather gather …’ Felix began to smirk.
Thus it was that Professor Cedric Dillworthy and his friend Felix Smythe of Smythe’s Bountiful Blooms, Knightsbridge, embarked for Venice on 10th October 1954. Some months earlier they had been embroiled in an embarrassing fiasco in St John’s Wood concerning a murdered woman and a coal scuttle. Since then, however, with the help of good weather and the sustained afterglow of the young Queen’s coronation (not to mention Felix’s newly bestowed Royal Appointment warrant) London life had proceeded with an amiable smoothness and that particular period of their lives was mercifully entering the realm of myth and legend.
Yet courtesy of Felix’s cousin, the gadding Violet, here they were shortly to be entangled in a fresh legend: Venice, in all its beguiling charm and brazen beauty.