Dottoressa Crowley answered, ‘It’s only right, isn’t it, to tell you what we saw, if it can help?’ There were nods of agreement from the others.

Her husband took over from her and said, ‘We’ve been talking about it already this morning, Commissario.’ With a gesture that encompassed all of the people at the table, he added, ‘It’s probably best that we each tell you what we saw.’

Dr Peterson cleared his throat a few times, then said, speaking with the sort of clarity that comes of the fear that a foreigner might not otherwise understand, ‘Well, after we got down into that place you call a campo, we were standing sort of in the front, to the left of Fred and Martha, and I was looking down at the purses those fellows were selling. And a man, not the one Martha saw — guy about my height — he moved forward until he was standing just a little bit behind me. He was on my left, but I really didn’t pay any attention to him because, as I said, I was looking at the purses. Then I heard the noise, sort of a zip zip — I didn’t have any idea what it was — sounded like a staple gun or something, or that thing they use when they take your tyres off — and there was the music from behind us, too — and then this guy stepped back without looking where he was going, and then he was gone. I didn’t think anything of it except that I didn’t like the way he pushed back like that, right into the people behind him.

‘Next thing you know, I looked back and I saw that the guy who was selling the purses, he was down on the ground. And then Martha was kneeling beside him, and then Fred, and then they said he was dead.’ He looked at Brunetti, and around at the others.

‘I never saw anything like it in my life,’ Dr Peterson continued, with what began to sound like indignation, as though he thought Brunetti owed him an explanation. He continued: ‘Well, we waited around for a while, I’d say about a half-hour, but nothing happened. No one came. And it was awful cold and we hadn’t had our supper yet, so we came back here to the hotel.’