On 28 May 1877, Luigi Ferretti was returning from a day at the rifle ranges, a flower held in his hand. He was soon to lay aside the uniform; his comrades observed him in high spirits, eager to return to civilian life. Before the afternoon had ended, he was borne out of the apartment where he occasionally worked as a cobbler, bound for the military hospital where the surgeon pronounced him dead. He had sustained a knife wound to the belly. In that house in Piacenza, none could afterwards affirm with certainty whose hand had held the blade.
At the outset, the wound was taken for an act of Ferretti’s own doing. The physicians dismissed this conjecture: according to their expert findings, he could not have dealt himself the fatal thrust alone. The inquiry turned toward Felici Filippone, lieutenant-colonel of the 73rd Regiment, whose quarters lay on the Via della Prevostura. Soon, nearly the entire town was repeating a simple tale: the young soldier was said to have courted Virginia Lorenzi, the officer’s housekeeper, and Filippone, seized with jealousy, had struck him down.
This tale possessed the merit of giving a human face to death. Yet it had to pass through a two-week trial without ever solidifying into proof. When the Assizes opened at Piacenza on 15 February 1878, a dense throng pressed before the courthouse. Filippone, aged fifty years, appeared in civilian attire, gloved in grey, a newspaper in hand. The man whom the public thought it knew through common rumour was called upon to answer forty-seven witnesses for the prosecution, thirteen for the defence, and eight medical experts.
Ferretti’s day had begun far from the Via della Prevostura. With his company, he had marched that morning toward the Trebbia for the final target practice of his term of service. The soldiers described him as cheerful; he had shot well and jested about his imminent discharge. He borrowed two lire from a comrade, then stopped at Dodi’s inn, where he dined, drank wine, and chatted with the innkeeper’s daughters. One of them presented him with a flower. As to its nature, the witnesses could not agree: some spoke of a rose, others of a carnation. The tavern-keeper described him as sober; Virginia, later, would depict him as slightly intoxicated.
After three o’clock, Ferretti directed his steps toward Filippone’s lodgings. There he performed shoemaking work and occasionally mended footwear for the officer or his domestic servants. The neighbours frequently saw him enter. The house was therefore no alien threshold upon which he had stumbled by chance, but a familiar dwelling where he might spend part of the day without arousing the slightest wonder.
Filippone, for his part, maintained that he had finished his meal and then departed for a stroll in the Vauxhall, a public garden situated some twenty or twenty-five minutes from his home. An artillery officer, Francesco Petrino, caught sight of him during that promenade. He likewise observed Virginia Lorenzi, breathless, hastening up to inform the colonel that a soldier had wounded himself within the apartment. Filippone set out upon the return journey. Other witnesses placed his passage at slightly differing hours; the proceedings failed to fix each minute of that transit between the dwelling and the park.
Inside the apartment, Virginia had been working alongside Clementina Barbieri, a seamstress engaged for needlework. Ferretti had retired into Filippone’s bedchamber. The two women related that he shut the door, after which he was asked to open it because of the heat. He parted the shutters, closed the door once more, and sounds of furniture being shifted made themselves heard. Ferretti emerged for an instant, declaring his desire to go to the hospital; the seamstress urged him to remain. Shortly thereafter, a fresh noise and a groan drew their notice. He was found upon the floor, seized with convulsions.
Neither Virginia nor Clementina claimed to have seen the blow. They believed at first that Ferretti was in liquor. Giovanni Trainini, Filippone’s servant, arrived next. He lifted the man, observed blood upon his shirt, and perceived that he was wounded. Virginia veiled herself and departed to seek her master at the Vauxhall. Trainini remained by Ferretti’s side and gave word to the garrison. The lieutenant-colonel returned, wrote an order for a litter to be fetched, and accompanied the wounded man as far as the hospital.
The accounts already parted company over the immediate circumstances of the catastrophe. According to certain voices, Ferretti was still breathing when he was placed upon the litter; the military surgeon judged that he had been dead for fifteen to thirty minutes prior to his arrival. Filippone asserted that he had attempted to succour him, and had heard him reply that he had hurt himself. Trainini affirmed that the stricken man breathed during the transport, whereas neighbouring witnesses deemed him already a corpse. These discrepancies revealed neither the precise instant of the wound nor the hand that had inflicted it.
The initial hypothesis of suicide collided with the opinion of the physicians, yet the weapon did nothing to dispel the mystery. Ferretti’s shoemaker’s knife was produced as a possible instrument; it bore no trace of blood. The witnesses agreed no better as to where it had been glimpsed or recovered. One spoke of a window ledge, another of a sink. No blood-stained knife ever came forth to support the allegation of a murder committed in that chamber.
The prosecution sought its motive in a purported liaison. Francesca Bracelli had observed Ferretti, on an earlier day, blowing a kiss to Virginia from the street. Yet this was an isolated scene, and those living in their immediate proximity failed to confirm any continued intimacy. Trainini testified that he had observed only respectful conduct. Virginia denied any declaration of affection. She stated that Ferretti had brought her flowers on several occasions, and sweetmeats once, which she maintained she had refused. Trainini reported, however, that she had recounted a different reception on 28 May: wishing not to give offence to Ferretti, she had allegedly bade him place the bunch of carnations into fresh water. She was married to Antonio Arnoldi; yet several neighbours took her for Filippone’s own wife, so long had she lived in his service. Appearances fed suspicion without establishing an intrigue.
The accusation drew further weight from Filippone’s conduct following the injury. He had not immediately sent into town for a physician, but ordered Ferretti conveyed to the military hospital. His initial report to headquarters stated that he had learned the news from Trainini, whereas Virginia had in truth come to alert him. He explained that he wished to avoid implicating his housekeeper in the affair. This omission bore heavily upon his credibility. Yet it did not establish that he had struck down the soldier. Filippone acknowledged an error in his narrative and offered an explanation for it; it fell to the jury to decide whether this defect in his account betrayed a murder.
The depositions served rather to thicken the uncertainties. Neighbours had overheard a groan and a few words addressed to Virginia and Giovanni, yet they disagreed as to who had heard them directly. Soldiers confirmed that Ferretti seemed overjoyed to quit the ranks; others reported that he was wont to complain of military life. Virginia swore he was drunk; the innkeeper maintained he was not. Trainini had himself been arrested at the start of the inquiry, then released. The witnesses did not all assign his return to the same hour, and one explained that the clock by which he had guided himself was inaccurate.
Filippone testified at length. He maintained that he had treated Virginia as a person worthy of trust, Ferretti as an esteemed soldier, and Trainini as a faithful servant. He denied that jealousy could ever have driven him to crime. His military record and the testimonies of fellow officers, who regarded him as a commander solicitous of his men, were read into the record. His composure faltered when speaking of his reputation, yet the distress of an accused man could not supply the place of facts, whether for the prosecution or the defence.
On 28 February, upon the close of testimony, the deputy prosecutor persisted in his theory of jealousy. He abandoned, however, the allegation of premeditated murder, praying the jurors to return a verdict of fatal injury dealt in a fit of sudden anger. Filippone’s counsel, Signor Guerra, countered that no witness placed his client within the apartment at the moment of the blow. The physicians excluded the possibility that Ferretti had wounded himself, yet that expert judgment did not identify the assailant. The state possessed a conjectured motive, not an eyewitness to the deed.
Two questions were put to the jury: Was Filippone guilty of the murder of Ferretti? Had he willfully inflicted the wound whereof the soldier died? After one hour and fifteen minutes of deliberation, the jurors answered in the negative to both. The President declared the accused acquitted. In the courtroom, officers, civilians, and ladies pressed forward to grasp his hand; the crowd escorted him to his dwelling with bared heads. The acquittal put an end to the prosecution, without ever disclosing who had struck Ferretti down.
The compiler, for his part, considered the arrest more astonishing than the deliverance. He entertained two possibilities: an unknown intruder might have entered while the two women worked in another room, or Ferretti might have inflicted the wound upon himself while under the influence of drink—a possibility the compiler raises without determining whether the act was voluntary. Neither could be proved. The soldier’s dying cry, interpreted by some as an accusation against Virginia and Trainini, appeared to him too feeble to convict any living soul. The flower—a rose to some, a carnation to others—had accompanied Ferretti to that house; the knife, found clean, shed no light upon the threshold.