The Case of the Blind Venetian

Before the leggy blonde appeared, the Venetian’s vanishing had been considered a missing person’s case. Hadn’t come home in three days, wasn’t answering his phone, hadn’t been seen at work. The usual.

I’d hedged my bets on the Venetian running off with an ex-lover. My snooping had revealed he was a sneak, and my intuition suspected he’d found himself a string of lovers and ended up tying himself in a knot or two. He had a few too many direct debits in a few too many jewellers and shoemakers, set up for mistresses and misters alike. Owed a lotta people a lotta money.

The case was a formality. Let the wife know he ain’t coming home, that he’s probably run off with another man or woman, and away from his debts.

But then the leggy blonde showed up at my office, saying she suspected the Venetian of being in danger.

She’d wandered in all meek-like, sporting a pink crepe dress, a maroon hat, and a pair of emerald eyes that’d make a bishop blush. Bad news travels fast and she was lightning.

The leggy blonde claimed she used to know the Venetian intimately, but that she’d since split with him hotter than pea soup. Apparently her new man – a fella by the name of Tommy Gunn – was a jealous piece o’ work. Gunn hadn’t been keen on hers and the Venetian’s former relationship. She’d suggested, through a little encouragement, that Gunn wanted rid of her old lover.

Then the day after she showed, the Venetian’s body was found washed up on the riverbank—

“Remember that theory you had about how the Venetian was dragged here after bein’ killed?”

Gah damn. Jack always had a knack for interrupting my train of thought.

Jack was an ‘himself’ of all trades, part Investigator, part PI, and all dick. He was the right side of six foot, and the wrong side of forty. Especially given he was thirty-eight.

Still, Jack was mostly useful as a partner, even if he treated the bonnet of my cream Triumph 2000 as his executive suite.

“Well, turns out it wasn’t quite like that,” Jack continued, eyes glistening with smugness, “Lieutenant’s managed to get a full confession outta Gunn – he threatened him with bringing in that blonde for questioning if he didn’t cooperate. He has him dead to rights, claims he did it all by himself—”

“Lemme guess,” I interrupted, “Lieutenant’s lowdown is that Gunn socked the Venetian on the noggin’ with that shoehorn we found down Fifth and Hillview, then dumped his body into the river off that bridge there. Only, the breezeblocks he tied to the Venetian’s feet were more breeze than hurricane and didn’t manage to keep the body underwater. So, when it resurfaced, Gunn rushed here to finish the job properly, and when he was spotted trying to drag the corpse back into the water he booked it like a librarian.”

Jack’s silence echoed. My turn being smug. I’d had a lotta practice.

I dragged out the last of my cigarette and inspected the Venetian’s body. Blunt force trauma to the skull, courtesy of a shoehorn. First tick. The mixture of dried blood and dirt on the ill-fitting suit surely meant he had been in the process of being dragged down to the river when he was abandoned. Second tick.

Gunn’s confession about killing the Venetian was almost airtight. But ‘almost airtight’ ain’t gonna stop a submariner from drowning, now is it?

“Only problem is these eight footprints that surround the dead man,” I said to Jack, pointing to the muddy bank. They were faint, but there were most definitely four sets of footprints surrounding the body.

Jack clicked his teeth in response.

Tommy’s shoe size matched one of the sets of prints, sure, but what about the other three?

“So,” I grinned to Jack, “my question is: who is Gunn protecting in all of this? Who were the other three people that helped Gunn and why is he claiming he worked alone? Last I checked, three and one ain’t quite the same.”

Jack thought about standing up from the car bonnet but figured it wasn’t worth the trouble. My thoughts floated back to the leggy blonde.

Ya see, after she first showed up at my office, Jack and I decided to head out and have a chat with Gunn. At that point, the Venetian was still classed as missing, not dead.

Gunn owned a shoe store on Fifth and Hillview and when we examined his accounts, we found the Venetian had recently made a sizeable down-payment on three identical pairs of eye-wateringly expensive shoes. Apparently, the Venetian’s order didn’t match his wife’s shoe size. Three pairs of shoes for another lover, it seemed.

Still, nothing seemed that unusual. Adultery might be immoral, but it ain’t illegal. So why was the leggy blonde so worried Gunn might hurt the Venetian, especially after the latter had paid him a large sum of money for a few shoes and then dipped faster than a wing into hot sauce?

Next day the Venetian showed up dead and we went back and searched the shoe store. Found ourselves a bloody shoehorn buried in the bin out back. Seemed as though the leggy blonde was right to be worried about Gunn. I mean, who kills a man with a shoehorn?

Lieutenant thought the modus-operandi fit nicer than a jigsaw. Gunn killed the Venetian, planning to keep both the down-payment and the shoes. Nice at double the price. Everyone else’d think the Venetian just disappeared with his new lover and had forgotten about the shoes in his haste to skip town.

The story was cleaner than a nun’s habit.

All except for the extra sets of footprints at the crime scene. Lieutenant didn’t seem to think it was important. I did.

Who did the footprints belong to? Who helped Gunn bump off the Venetian, and why? Sure, Gunn was meaner than a Monday morning, but why would he go to all the trouble of killing a man just to keep a few extra pairs of shoes and a down-payment?

Plus, how coincidental that the leggy blonde showed up the day before we found the body, a woman who despite her timidity just so happened to be intimate with both Gunn and the Venetian. She had to be involved in this somehow.

Like a freefalling abacus, none of it added up.

“Gah, I need a drink,” I complained. The ideas rattling in my head made it feel like a street carnival. 

Jack hoisted all six feet of himself upright from my bonnet at the promise of whiskey—

Shit. All six feet of Jack.

All six feet.

“Shit,” I exclaimed, this time letting Jack in on my internal monologue as I re-examined the footprints in the mud. One pair were Gunn’s, but the other three… They were all identical.

The six extra footprints weren’t three other people at all. They all belonged to one person.

The leggy blonde!

“Jack, how many legs does the gal – the blonde gal – have?” I asked.

“Uhh, one, two…” Jack started counting on his fingers.

“It was rhetorical Jack,” I interrupted, “she has six. Six legs, with three sets o’ footprints.”

“Damn, would ya fancy that,” replied Jack, “ya know, I always thought there was something off ‘bout having 3 pairs of legs. Can’t trust no-one with that many limbs. Wait, no, legs ain’t limbs. Appendages.”

I ignored the rest of Jack’s rambling.

The leggy blonde had it all set up from the start. Like sweet and sour, it suddenly fit together.

The Venetian had been dead the whole time, there was no missing person’s case. The blonde had convinced Gunn to kill him out of jealousy. Then, realising her gig was in danger of capsizing, she came to me and threw Gunn under the bus. A day later, the Venetian was officially found dead.

Of course! And the down-payment on the three identical pairs of shoes at the store – the Venetian was buying them for her. She must’ve persuaded Gunn to kill him because of it. She even planted the shoehorn there too after murdering the poor Venetian, all ready for us to find.

Wouldn’t surprise me if she loosened the breezeblocks on the body too, just to make sure we’d discover it. Only problem was, she left a few too many footprints.

She’d played all of us like a fiddle and now the Venetian was dead,

Gunn was in custody and so infatuated with her he was keeping her name outta it, and she had the shoes AND the cash.

I laughed to myself and lit another cigarette.

Stefan Matthews is a screenwriter and currently doing a Masters in creative writing at Bournemouth University. He is a dream-smith, an illusion-weaver, a forger of fantasia. Well, that’s what he claims.

I laughed to myself and lit another cigarette.