“Indeed,” said Holmes, “the Palazzo Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, I believe?”

“Correct. My father bought it and bequeathed it to me. You may also know something of the late Jeffrey Aspern’s life in Venice?”

Holmes looked a little surprised.

“Who does not know of Jeffery Aspern? A precursor of Edgar Allan Poe, who left Virginia in 1818 and lived so much of his life in Europe. The friend of Byron and, I believe, briefly of Shelley during their last years in Italy. Does not Edward Trelawny in his Recollections have something to say about their meetings in Venice and Ravenna?”

“And still more in his private papers.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes enthusiastically, “I cannot pretend to be a literary critic but I have always considered that Aspern’s early promise remained unfulfilled. However, his ‘Juanita’ lyrics will live as long as poetry is read. His dates, if I remember correctly, were 1788 to 1863. He certainly outlived Lord Byron and his English counterparts. Like William Wordsworth he lasted too long, for a romantic poet, and he worked past his best.”

“You are remarkably well informed, sir.” Pen Browning looked at Holmes and then glanced quickly away again as though coming to the painful part of the matter. “You know that Aspern’s former companion, Juanita Bordereau, died last year as a very old woman?”

“I had read a notice of her death in the papers. She was quite ninety years old, I believe.”

“She became Aspern’s young mistress in 1820. The worse he treated her, the more devoted to him she seemed to become. After his death, twenty-seven years ago, she was joined at the Casa Aspern in Venice by her younger sister, Tina. They lived there until last year, as a pair of elderly spinsters. The house lies on a small canal in a quiet backwater.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes again. His eyes invited Pen Browning to continue.

“Since her sister’s death, Tina Bordereau has left the house empty and returned to America. The estate is a complicated one, for there was no marriage between the poet and his mistress, and no children. Everything is in the care of executors and agents. Yet the Casa Aspern apparently contains treasures of great literary value, as well as secrets capable of creating an insupportable scandal. I am told that in the locked drawers of a Napoleonic escritoire there lies the whole unpublished correspondence of Lord Byron and Aspern.”

The eyes of Sherlock Holmes narrowed in astonishment. Pen Browning continued.

“There are also said to be manuscripts of poems by Byron which have never seen the light of day. I have also been offered by a dealer the chance to purchase the manuscript of an unpublished novel of 1820, supposed to have been bequeathed by Byron to Aspern when his lordship left Venice on his final and fatal voyage to Greece. It is The Venetian Nun: A Gothic Tale, by William Beckford, the so-called “Abbot of Fonthill.” The only known copy to survive, it had been presented by the author to Byron. Goodness knows what more there may be. Worst of all, for me, there are said to be unknown poems and letters of my father’s and of my mother’s. That is what brings me here.”

“Remarkable,” said Holmes tolerantly.

“There are alleged to be letters written by both my parents. These may be rough drafts but they are none the less compromising. They include intimate letters to one another. Also my father’s private letters to close female friends written by him after my mother’s death in 1861. He was very close to Miss Isa Blagden while in Florence, as was my mother, and the attachment continued long after his bereavement. They exchanged letters sometimes every day. The same was true in London during his attachment to Miss Julia Wedgwood, also after my mother’s death. Such women were an intimate part of his life. There was nothing vicious or improper in these friendships-hardly even indiscreet. Yet it is now suggested by the agents that some of these Casa Aspern letters, containing expressions of private affections, are already in the hands of dealers.”

He paused, as if watching us for incredulity. If so, he found none.

“I fear,” said Holmes, “that a letter becomes the property of the person to whom it is addressed, though the right to publish it does not. However, the contents may be made known.”

“Such stories are lies, Mr Holmes, or at the best misinterpretations. How any such papers could have reached Aspern-let alone the Bordereau sisters-I do not know. Domestic dishonesty is unlikely but chicanery may well be the answer. A housemaid may have a follower. In truth, he cares nothing for her but a great deal for access to the house, to documents which he may steal and sell. Something of that sort. As for Jeffrey Aspern, of course my father, and indeed my mother, knew him. I do not think they found him simpatico and I am sure they would not have entrusted such papers to him knowingly. Of Robert Browning’s poetry there is said to be a rejected prologue to The Ring and the Book among the Aspern papers and also dramatic monologues excluded by my father from his great collection of Men and Women in 1855.”

He paused once more.

“Pray continue, Mr Browning!” The impatience had vanished from Holmes’s eyes.

“I doubt if the Bordereau sisters knew the half of what was there. They were not connoisseurs of poetry but, if you will forgive me, money-grubbing harpies! They lived a secluded life after Aspern’s death and I never met them. My father, of course, lived in Italy until 1861 and had certainly known Aspern in his later years. My father also returned to us in Venice for part of each year and died there in December.”

“And you have seen none of the material which is said to lie in Aspern’s escritoire?”

“Not as yet. I was first informed of it by a hint from the notary, Angelo Fiori, who had acted at one time for the Aspern estate. Fortunately his sister is a family friend who nursed my father in his last days. It was through her that her brother communicated with me.”

Holmes glanced at his pipe but forbore to light it in the presence of Fannie Browning.

“Forgive me, Mr Browning, but how would so many private papers of your father’s come to be in this collection unless he gave them to Jeffrey Aspern or the Misses Bordereau? Could a housemaid and her follower account for all that you have described? In any case, surely Aspern himself was dead before most of your father’s letters to female friends, of which you speak, could have come into his hands.”

“Exactly so, Mr Holmes. Perhaps they have simply been stolen by an intruder and sold to the Bordereau sisters. Perhaps they are innocent letters misinterpreted in some way. I am at a loss to say. After Aspern’s death the sisters were notorious as dabblers in innuendo and defamation. Lice on the locks of literature, as Lord Tennyson has it! On one occasion, my father used that very phrase to describe them. He never liked Juanita Bordereau. He thought her meddlesome and troublesome. She was scandalous in her youth and when she became too old to create scandal, she encouraged it in others. That was how he summed her up. For many years she had been a collector of documents and any rare editions which had a whiff of sensationalism. William Beckford and the like. Then it seems her tastes became more depraved. She employed scouts, if I may so call them, to attend the sale rooms or to negotiate privately.”

“But she did not negotiate with you or your father, I take it?”

“She would have known better. However, I have been visited by two of these scavengers since my father’s death, asking me if I would care to buy back certain papers. I sent them about their business. I see now that it was perhaps not wise to do so. And now Juanita Bordereau is dead. Tina Bordereau has shown no interest in the papers nor in Jeffery Aspern, except for the money that could be made. Since the death of her sister she has put the whole business into the hands of agents, whose job it would be to dispose of them at the best price. This is regardless of what damage may be done to the feelings of the living or the reputation of the dead.”