One of the reasons I returned home from Derby early is that I wanted to watched the second episode of the series during which I solved the issue of Livia as the girlfriend and confirmed my belief that this Fazio was the father of the officer in the main series and the books.
When Salvo is on the beach he notices that a door appears ajar on the veranda of the holiday corner house overlooking the beach, he investigates and catches one of boys who have broken in and whose mother I suspect becomes his housekeeper for when he returns the boy the boy without arresting him for mother to give a good physical hiding he notices that she has prepared some delicacy for the local deli as a means of improving her income to make ends meet, hence not being home to exercise ongoing control of her son/sons. He tracks down the owners who visit and check that noting is missing and then insists on viewing the beach and bay from the veranda and then makes an off screen request to the couple. We then see him moving in although it assumed he is renting rather than having purchased the property.
We had previously seen him saying goodbye to his girl friend after she had spent Christmas with him, explaining that work and having agreed to spend the New Year’s evening with colleagues prevented him joining her with her mother for the New Year. He also makes excuses to the same colleagues about not accepting the invitation of Fazio senior ho has also invited Caterella. We then see him enjoying food and wine alone in the hotel room although why he has not returned to the allocated flat is not explained.
Nor does he spend New Year evening at the home of his father who calls to wish him well and brings a case of wine which suspecting it is not of outstanding quality he distributes to his colleagues leaving only one bottle for himself later when he solves the case he drinks some of the wine and congratulates his father out loud,
We therefore learn more of his need to be alone, to enjoy good food, and wine and to think through solutions to work mysteries. The girl friend is excited by the new home and rattles off what she will bring and how she will stamp her personality on the establishment. Montalbano is clearly not impressed but it is a subsequent incident which brings the relationship to an end.
On the morning of New Year’s Day he is woken from a heavy slumber by Fazio who first quizzes him over the white lie that he had to go elsewhere the previous evening and then breaks the news that a man had been shot in the face in room 22 of the same hotel. The shot going unnoticed with the letting off of fire works and weapons into the air. One consideration is that this is the cause of the death of man, an accident.
The investigation reveals two registered nearby gun owners. The first held by an elder shows the weapon to be a souvenir from World War Two with filled barrels to prevent an accident. The second is from a couple across the way where the husband admits he fired the weapon into the air, although later the wife admits she was he one who used the riffle in celebration and does not understand how a bullet could have caused the fatality. Tests establish that a different bullet was used and fired at an angle from above. The arrest of the woman is designed to discourage the firing of weapons into the air at festivities.
The man who dies owned the hotel with his young wife but is away for the greater part of the year as a representative of a firm in Russia. He suffers from hearing sensitivity which is why he stayed in a separate bedroom to that of his wife although why not one adjacent is the flaw in the storyline, The complication is that he moved from the allotted room where he was shot to another quieter and a housemaid had moved the belongings at his request so why had he returned?
During the episode a local priest approaches the Inspector with a plea that he visit with him an old dying woman who has confessed something which she needs to also say outside the confessional so something can be put right. With great reluctance Salvo agrees to the request but the woman dies before she can provide sufficient information to understand what he needs. While he is wrestling with the problem his former school teacher makes a call and invites him to her home for a meal where he is introduced to a friend of the woman who has a fascination for murders and has become a walking encyclopaedia on the crimes. Salvo takes he opportunity to ask her about a case where he hoped there might be a connection, but she did not and he returns home late after the meal. Meantime his girl friend arrives and finds that he is not there to meet her. She takes a taxi and goes to the house waits up and eventually goes to bed. She hears him return but before he reaches the bedroom there is call from the woman he had asked about the historical crime and she says that she has lain awake thinking and realised she knew the case but the woman in question had a different name. He immediately goes back to hear at first hand what she has to say and the girl friend only hears the name of a woman who he has gone straight out to see.
When he returns he explains about the case and the woman but this only helps the girlfriend to realise that Salvo puts work before everything else and he is never going to become the kind of husband and father of her children that she wants. She leaves by taxi in the middle of the night. At one point he goes to the where she lives and waits in his car only to see her come out and becomes pillion to a young man on a scoter where they have obviously already become closely attached. He closes his involvement in the relationship. Enter Livia next ?
The story of the woman he was able to unravel over time is that she had refused to give poison to woman who she suspected wanted to use on husband. The woman had worked in pharmacy in the town and had taken over the service when her husband had died. The other woman had nevertheless been arrested and tried for murder when the husband had died from a heart attack but where the prescribed poison could have the same effect. The woman had gone to prison for 20 years, in part because of the evidence of the woman now wanting absolution. Why had she not said she had not provided the poisoned therefore the death was a natural causes one. It emerged that the woman who had gone to prison had an affair with her husband.
Salvo attempts to honour his commitment and goes to see the woman now also old but living with her daughter and grandchildren had become reconciled after release from prison. Salvo finds her asleep and looking at peace and takes the decision not to resurrect the historical experience from several decades before.
Turning to the main case there is a red herring introduced involving the mafia which appears to implicate the business owner and also the house maid who we find is having an affair with the business owner and where the owners wife is related to one of the main crime families on the Island. However the real culprits are the wife and her lover the man who manages the hotel in the absence of the owner. He had decided to leave his job and return to Vigata. The housemaid had noticed that a package, later established to contain sleeping pills and ear plugs was not with his things. Someone had taken them from the new back to the original. He had gone in search and was shot and this pointed to an “inside” job which together evidence helps to confirm.
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