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gave me such a wicked grin, I started to worry I had inadvertently promised I would drop by for more than the ingredients for that night’s supper.
    The university was situated on the Fondamenta Soccorso, in a beautiful building that made even the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge seem ugly. The students were beautiful too. Even the security guards, like almost everyone I had seen in Venice so far, looked as though they were actors, cast in the part, rather than ordinary men doing an ordinary job. No wonder Nick Marsden felt the need to up his game when he came to do his sabbatical in the city.
    Nick was already in the office. Unlike me, he didn’t seem in the least worse for wear for the previous day’s bottle of prosecco. As enthusiastically as he’d shown me the flat, he showed me the tiny cubbyhole that had been allocated to me and explained everything I might need to know, from the procedure for taking books out of the university library to how to persuade the temperamental coffee machine to serve up something faintly drinkable.
    ‘Actually,’ he said, having gone through the complicated sequence of punches and kicks the machine required before it would spit out an approximation of an espresso, ‘don’t bother. Far easier to go to the café on the corner.’
    I was happy with that.
    Later, he introduced me to other new colleagues, including Beatrice from Rome. I was especially keen to meet her as our areas of interest overlapped. Beatrice, known to her friends (which definition now seemed to include me) as Bea, was writing a thesis on the legendary Giacomo Casanova, concentrating on his intellectual achievements rather than his romantic conquests. We’d already corresponded by email about the possibility of my getting access to the Donato library. Bea was sure that some of Casanova’s letters must be languishing there too.
    ‘I’m going to the library tomorrow morning,’ I told her.
    ‘You’re kidding,’ said Bea. ‘How on earth did you swing it? Did you find the magic word? I’ve been trying to get into that library for years. Never heard a thing.’
    ‘I just wrote a letter.’
    ‘A letter? Not an email?’
    ‘Not an email. Not in the first instance, anyway. I thought perhaps I might be writing to someone who appreciates tradition.’
    ‘But what did you say?’
    ‘Nothing unusual. I just went on and on about how Luciana’s correspondence might hold the clue to one of the biggest literary mysteries of all time.’
    ‘ The Lover’s Lessons ,’ said Bea, referring to the novel that had obsessed me since I’d first heard about it five years earlier. ‘Well, I suppose if you decide Luciana isn’t the author, it will at least lend some more weight to my theory that Casanova is.’
    ‘I will report back on everything,’ I assured her. ‘And I’ll do my best to make sure you get access to the library too.’
    ‘Well, I don’t know how you did it, but I am very envious indeed.’
    ‘It’s like you’ve scored an invitation to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory,’ Nick added.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
    ‘I mean,’ said Nick, ‘that nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out. The Donato library is as much a mystery as your anonymous novel.’
    ‘As is the owner,’ Bea told me. ‘No one has seen him in nearly fifteen years.’
    ‘They say he only comes out at night to drink the blood of young virgins,’ Nick continued, really warming to his theme.
    ‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘In that case, I’ll be perfectly safe.’
    Nick’s blush was a delight to behold.
     
    Despite his curious reputation, now that we had made contact Marco Donato could not have seemed, to me anyway, more helpful. That afternoon, I received further instructions regarding my first visit to his library. The building in which it was housed was on the Grand Canal, in one of the few significant houses that remained under private ownership and had not been turned into apartments, a gallery or a luxury hotel. I