Lovejoy connives to win a Welsh oak dresser at an auction well below his value, but when Eric discovers a stuck door, they find more than they bargained for.
A sickly and paraplegic American multimillionaire is obsessed with saving the art treasures of a slowly sinking Venice and hires Lovejoy to help in his enterprise.
Lovejoy finds it has not the beautiful Caterina he has been seeing in Venice but her greedy sister Lavinia, who is not in saving art for posterity, but herself.