Thus Was Adonis Murdered (7 page)

The last visit of the morning was to a small glassworks, where we were to observe, said Graziella, the traditional and historic art of glass-blowing. I was feeling inclined, by this time, to take a keener interest in the traditional and historic art of putting bubbles into Campari soda; but I did not venture to say so.

Soon, however, like the first rumblings of a zinc thunder-sheet, there began to be murmurs of complaint from Eleanor. It wasn’t, she said, good enough: what we had been promised was a guided tour of sights of artistic and historical interest; instead of which, we were made to spend half the morning being dragged round a glass-factory. This was not mere incompetence, but contrived deliberately: the object was to make us buy at an inflated price the probably inferior products of the factory and so enable that woman
(videlicet
Graziella) to pocket a handsome commission.

These complaints were initially addressed to me—we are, you will remember, as Ruth and Naomi. It seemed clear, though, that they represented merely a limbering up for a direct attack on Graziella. I considered the prospect of spending the next eight days caught in the crossfire between these two formidable women—its frightfulness spurred me to action.

“Eleanor,” I said, “I have not your stamina. I was thinking of slipping away and having a coffee in the Piazza. If you’re really not keen on the glass-blowing, perhaps I could persuade you to keep me company?”

Eleanor would naturally have preferred to stay and have a row with Graziella; but she could not, with much colour of politeness, say so. I bore her off in triumph, congratulating myself on my stroke of diplomacy. Buying Eleanor coffee, even in Florian’s, seemed a small price to pay.

Our conversation turned to the subject on which we are most in sympathy—that is to say, the wickedness of income tax. Such phrases as “penalizing achievement,” and “petty-minded persecution,” soon filled the air of the Piazza.

Descending, in due course, from the general to the particular, Eleanor sought my views on what might be done to mitigate her own liabilities. Her position is very pitiful: though her share of profits from Frostfield’s is received as director’s remuneration and treated, therefore, as earned income, and her other investments have been selected for capital growth, her top rate of tax is 90%.

I did my best to be helpful; but Eleanor seems already to be excellently advised—every suggestion I put forward is reflected in her existing arrangements. I had almost despaired of assisting her when it struck me that she was quite perfect for the penniless husband scheme. Or rather, vice versa.

“Eleanor,” I said, so excited that I spilt my Campari soda, “am I right in assuming that you are free to marry?”

“My dear Julia,” she said, emitting a noise like a baby xylophone, intended, I gather, to express amusement, “if you are advising me to find myself a rich husband—”

“No, no,” I cried. “Certainly not. You must find yourself a husband with no money at all.”

I went on to explain to her the consequences of marriage, which are, of course, that the earned income of the female spouse may be treated as hers for tax purposes, just as if she were a separate person, but her investment income is treated as the income of her husband. It follows, as we all know, that if the parties to a marriage have both earned and unearned income they should arrange for the earnings to be those of the wife. It also follows that a single lady with income from both sources should take immediate steps to acquire a penniless husband.

Presented, free of charge, with this elegant and efficient tax-saving scheme, requiring no expensive documentation and not attracting stamp duty, you will imagine that Eleanor wept tears of gratitude and offered to buy me another Campari soda. You will be wrong.

“Really, Julia,” she said, repeating the xylophone effect, “you seem to take a very cynical view of marriage.”

I am, as you know, Selena, by no means cynical, being on the contrary sentimental to a fault; but if people are going to let sentiment interfere with their tax planning, there is no helping them.

There followed a digression, while my companions discussed the merits of the penniless husband scheme. Knowing nothing of such matters, I am unable to report it in detail: should any of my readers be able to put it to personal advantage, they will perhaps think it proper, when next in the Corkscrew, to offer Julia a glass of wine.

I asked Eleanor if she did not find it a little unnerving to have among our travelling companions a member of the Department of Inland Revenue.

“Ned? Oh, my dear Julia,” said Eleanor, “of course not. He’s a friend of Kenneth’s.” I looked, I suppose, baffled. “You do know who Kenneth is?”

I mumbled an embarrassed negative—not to know who Kenneth was seemed to be a solecism, but one I could not remedy.

“Oh, my dear Julia,” said Eleanor, with a further xylophone imitation, “Kenneth Dunfermline. One of our most promising young sculptors.”

“Oh, really? How very interesting—I didn’t realize,” I said, trying to disguise the fact that the name was unfamiliar to me. “Even so, Eleanor, I am by no means persuaded that friendship with a sculptor, however distinguished, will prevent a man from the Revenue from behaving like a man from the Revenue. I don’t think that I myself would be inclined, in such company, to mention, for example, that I was putting down my holidays as a business expense.”

On this point, however, it appears that Eleanor’s strength is as the strength of ten, because her heart is pure: she really is here for business purposes. An English lady of substantial means and excellent taste, a life-long collector of antiques and
objets d’art,
and a resident of Venice for the past thirty years, has recently made the transition to Paradise: her collection is expected to be of considerable importance. The object of Eleanor’s journey is to take an early view of it, in the hope, I gather, of arranging a private purchase of those items which interest her: once they go to auction, she says, the prices will become ridiculous. She has asked the Major if he is here for the same purpose and it appears that he is. Neither of them, therefore, is in Venice for pure pleasure: their designs are on the furniture and effects of the late Miss Priscilla Tiverton.

I hope there is not going to be any unpleasantness—I mean I think there is. At any rate, no one can say it is my fault—I mean they will certainly say so. Well, I will describe to you in full the events of the weekend: I leave it to you to judge whether I have at any stage or in any particular done more than politeness and good nature required of me.

On Saturday morning, sitting on the terrace in the corner previously described, I was reflecting on my proposed pursuit of Ned and wondering, rather anxiously, whether it might cause distress to his friend Kenneth. I would be reluctant—for I am well-disposed towards artists—to do anything which might give pain to one. That there is an attachment one can hardly doubt, but whether it is a deep and sincere attachment, of the kind which makes people upset, or of a merely frivolous nature, I cannot at present be certain. I reasoned, however, as follows:

(1)   either Kenneth is deeply and sincerely attached to Ned or he is not;

(2)   if he is not so attached, then my pursuit of Ned will cause him no distress;

(3)   if he is so attached, then either the attachment is reciprocal or it is not;

(4)   if it is reciprocal, Ned will reject my advances and my pursuit of him will accordingly cause Kenneth no distress;

(5)   if it is not reciprocal, Kenneth will suffer distress whether or not I pursue Ned;

(6)   if Kenneth will suffer distress whether I pursue Ned or not, my pursuit of Ned cannot be the cause of Kenneth’s distress;

(7)   it is therefore logically impossible for my pursuit of Ned to cause Kenneth distress.

I had taken up my pen to report to you this example of the usefulness of logic—without which I might have come to an altogether different conclusion—when I saw that Marylou had come on to the terrace. She is by no means one of those whom I would wish to avoid: I emerged from the cover of the vine or similar shrub.

“Are you,” I asked, “waiting for your husband?”

“My husband,” said Marylou, “has gone to Verona for the weekend to stay with a business associate.” She made the expression “business associate,” which I would previously have thought innocuous, sound decidedly pejorative. She didn’t make “husband” sound all that flattering, either. Wondering if these were discreet American euphemisms for some unmentionable debauchery, I made noises of sympathetic enquiry.

Stanford is employed by the English subsidiary of an American engineering firm. He is, it seems, one of those abrasive, dynamic young executives who refuse to take holidays unless calculated to further their acquaintance with those useful in business. Still, after a campaign of several months, Marylou had at last persuaded him to take her on a genuine private vacation—one, that is to say, during which Stanford would devote to her his whole time and attention and she, in her turn, would not be obliged to make polite conversation with the wives or other relatives of his customers and colleagues. Or so, poor girl, she had believed. At the last moment before their departure, he had disclosed to her his acceptance of a weekend invitation from an important customer in Verona. Justly indignant at his duplicity, she had refused to go; but now she had no one to look at Venice with her.

I suggested, naturally, that we should explore it together, and asked if there was anything in particular that she would like to see.

“I saw a divine set of embroidered table linen when we went to the Rialto yesterday,” said Marylou. “But I didn’t have time to buy it. Could we go back there? Or is it too far?”

I assured her that it was not. Although the distance from St. Mark’s to the Rialto represents nearly half the length of the Grand Canal, it is, by land, a mere five minutes’ walk.

That, at any rate, is the impression given by the map in Ragwort’s guide book. There is a strange lack of correspondence between places as represented by maps and places as they actually are. Setting forth on a route which should lead one, according to the cartographer, to one’s objective in square F11, one suddenly finds oneself outside a church which he assigns to square M3. If, as in Venice is always the case, the church contains two Bellinis and a Giorgione, it is hardly possible for the Art Lover to pass by without a glance.

Our progress towards the Rialto was therefore erratic. Our passage across it was no less dilatory. Of the two rows of shops which line the ancient bridge, none could complain of lack of patronage. It was not only the set of table linen: it was, in the end, three sets of table linen; it was lace shawls; it was leather purses, elaborately decorated; it was little glass mice, holding orchestral instruments; it was many other things of pleasure and delight, all described by Marylou as perfectly divine and not really expensive. Graziella had told us of the great days of Venetian commerce, when all the money in the world was said to change hands on the Rialto: it appeared Marylou’s ambition to restore them single-handed.

We came at last to the far bank of the Grand Canal and the district known as the Dorsodouro. Seeming rather to welcome the student than the tourist, it is altogether different from that of St. Mark’s. There is in the very air an almost Attic saltiness, reminding one that here indeed is one of the historic centres of the European intellect, the nursery of the Renaissance, the acropolis of free thought against the pedantry of Popes and the tyranny of princes. Here the great Aldus—

“That’s not what Graziella said yesterday about the Council of Ten,” said Marylou, the confidante of these reflections.

“Graziella,” I replied kindly, “was talking yesterday about the Middle Ages. I am now speaking of the Renaissance, which is entirely different. And I should mention, Marylou, that to interrupt Counsel, when fairly launched on a nice piece of rhetoric, is the exclusive prerogative of the judiciary—and in them to be discouraged.”

I had forgotten that Americans always think one means what one says. To my dismay, she began to apologize. I added at once that she was a dozen times prettier than the entire High Court Bench, and might interrupt me whenever she pleased. But she seemed unpersuaded. By way of further assurance, therefore, I kissed her on the nose. This occurring outside the Casa Rezzonico occasioned some mockery from the passing Venetians; but in all good nature, Selena, what less could I have done?