‘Of course it’s bound to happen one day,’ he mused now, maliciously. ‘Count Guido, father of ten, a man of distinction, fat, sedate, middle-aged, with a wife to match.’

‘That shirt looks like it’s worth a thousand dollars,’ Guido mused, fingering his half-full glass significantly.

‘Only a joke,’ Marco placated him.

‘Not funny.’ Guido took another swallow and sighed mournfully. ‘Not funny at all.’

Roscoe Harrison’s London home was no palace, but it had had as much money lavished on it as the Calvani abode. The difference was that he was a man without taste. He believed in display, and the crude power of cash, and it showed.

‘I buy only the best,’ he was saying now to the fair-haired young woman sitting in his office at the back of the house. ‘That’s why I’m buying you.’

‘You aren’t buying me, Mr Harrison,’ Dulcie said coolly. ‘You’re hiring my skill as a private detective. There’s a big difference.’

‘Well your skill will do me just fine. Take a look at this.’

He thrust a photograph across the desk. It showed Roscoe’s daughter, Jenny Harrison, her dark hair streaming over her shoulders in the Venetian sunlight, listening ardently to a young gondolier playing a mandolin, while another gondolier, with curly hair and a baby face, looked on.

‘That’s the character who thinks he’s going to marry Jenny for her fortune,’ Roscoe snapped, jabbing at the mandolin player with his finger. ‘He’s told her he isn’t really a gondolier, but heir to a count-Calvani, or some such name-but I say it’s a big, fat lie.

‘I’m not an unreasonable man. If he really were a posh nob that would be different. His title, my money. Fair enough. But a posh nob rowing a gondola? I don’t think so. I want you to go to Venice, find out what’s going on. Then, when you’ve proved he’s no aristocrat-’

‘Perhaps he is,’ Dulcie murmured.

Roscoe snorted. ‘Your job is to prove he isn’t.’