Chapter 21
The meeting was coming to the end and the Deputy Commissioner did not invite the eight soldiers to sit down. He had stood up, Mariapia and Giuseppe had automatically stood up after him, and the young official had said to everyone: "It is my task to determine, in consultation with the coroner, whether a violent death that has been assigned to me was caused by accident, murder or suicide. There is no doubt that it was murder for Peppino Scognamiglio. I will pass on to the examining magistrate everything I have gathered on the case, and he will decide whether or not to open a trial against someone. I have no proof to give him, because none of you saw anyone go up into the courtyard in the half hour in which the victim, according to the autopsy report, had been killed: the sailor C
