I love Elizabeth more than anything else in my life. I would gladly and willingly have given up every last penny I possessed for her. She could have asked anything, and I would have done it. She is my love. To see her sleep, to see her smile, to see the way she rests her head on her hand as she sits reading on the settee. That is all I have ever needed. This is my wife, and for every moment of the past twenty years I have loved her as a wife. She is the best person I have ever known; how that is I do not understand. Perhaps the cruelty and malice of her parents cancelled each other out, and by some miracle produced a woman who has neither. I do not know. All I know is that I would have laid down my life for her. Now I will.

My sins, the sins of Venice, have defiled the one person I have loved, the woman I should have protected and nurtured. I am married to my own daughter, the child I should have held in my arms and loved as a father. Whom I should have brought up, cherished, seen married, seen holding children in her arms. Instead, I consigned her to a cruel childhood, and then a terrible fate. I saw with my own eyes what I had done when I was confronted with the hideous product of our union, but I did not recognise as such until now. It is too great to bear. I can no longer live with her, and I cannot live without her.

As long as she knows nothing, she will miss me and regret my passing, and will be able to build a new life, a happy one. Her husband, who was getting on in years, tripped on a carpet and fell from a window. Sad; he was a loving husband, but he never liked heights. She will mourn and, I hope, forget. She is young enough to remarry, and will be wealthy beyond care. I had wished to grow old with her – older, I should say – and that is no longer possible. She will instead carry a fond memory of me, rather than the repelled loathing that she must feel if she knew the truth.

She has done nothing wrong in her entire life, except love me. You thought I did not know of her past. I knew nearly everything; but I could find out nothing about her origins. Her story began at that orphanage in Lausanne. There was no trace of the identity of her mother, or her father, no notion where she had been born or even when. I looked, but came up with nothing. She was an orphan and what did it matter who or what her parents were? I loved her too much to be bothered by her way of life, so why should matters so far beyond her control be of any importance? Why should I have connected her with the ravings of a monster in Venice years before, cajoling a man with a tale to bend him to her will?

In a few moments I will open the window that has been waiting for me for near half a century. I do not fear it. That old Venetian has been patient, and will wait a few moments longer. All those things of which I was so proud, which gave me such satisfaction, have fled from my mind as if they had never happened. All those businesses, those tangled connections of money, will unravel when I am dead. I leave it to you to salvage what you can, if you wish. In a few short years, everything I have done will fade and be forgotten, as I will be and deserve to be.

Very well. Let it be so.

With thanks to:

Charlotte Bannister-Parker, Felicity Bryan, Véronique Cardi, Dan Franklin, Julie Grau, Kalypso Nikolaides, Lyndal Roper, Nick Stargardt, Karina Stern, Lucinda Stevens, Françoise Triffaux and, more than anyone and as usual, Ruth Harris.