Venus with Pistol by Gavin Lyall

Author:Gavin Lyall
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Fiction
ISBN: 9780330027595
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 1979-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

I still hadn't anything else to do, so I walked directly away from the Canal Grande, zigzagging through narrow alleys until I came out on the quay on the north side. You could see San Michele a few hundred yards off across the still water, faint and flat in the mist. Just a low, red-brick-walled island with the spires of cypress trees poking up behind.

There's a regular vaporetto service from the quay, but first I dropped into a cafe for a snifter - yes, I know: at ten-thirty in the morning - and a telephone call. It turned out I was lucky to catch Elizabeth Whitley.

'I'm going out; I've - got an appointment,' she said briskly. 'What is it?'

'A Durer engraving.'

'How would you know?'

'It's got the monogram - AD, and a date: 1513. But I mean, everybody knows Durer.'

'That's why he gets faked so much.'

I could have said Harry shared my view, but she probably wouldn't have been impressed. Anyway, I'd been told to stay away from Signor Burroughs, hadn't I? So I said: 'Well, suppose it's real - what's it worth?'

'How can I tell? I haven't seen it.'

'Well, there's a knight on a horse and a chap with a skull face holding up a big eggtimer and behind them there's a sort of devil, I suppose ... Sounds a bit like those Swedish movies, doesn't it?'

'Where d'you think Bergman gets his ideas from? It might be a "Knight, Death and the Devil"; there's a few around. If it is, then it's worth - oh, say seven thousand dollars.'

'D'you want it at that price?'

'Ye-es. We got another Durer in New York; they'd make a nice pair. But not until I've seen it.'

'Course not. But can you get your hands on that money fast, without going through Managua?'

'I can go up to ten thousand. But--'

'Never mind, love. I'll ring you later. I've got an appointment.'

San Michele is a cemetery - and nothing else, bar the chapel and the offices and so on. A few acres of flat land crossed with neat gravel paths, walls, rows of cypresses, and the whole thing held together by the bones of fifty generations of Venetians. If they've left enough cash for it, mind. You get your first few years' lodging free, then you have to start paying rent - or they dig you up and dump you in a communal pit in one corner. A pricey place to die, Venice. At the office they told me where Lady Witherford's new address was, and roughly how to get to it, and I plodded off into the cold. They didn't have much custom that morning: a workman with a wheelbarrow, a few cats slinking along in the shelter of the walls, and from somewhere the thonk-thonk-thonk of a stonemason cutting a new headstone. That apart, there was just me and the mist.

But there was nothing creepy or sad or even particularly impressive about it all. I mean, you could stand there and convince yourself you were alone

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