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“Do you know if the previous housekeepers had to transfer a box like this every morning?” James asked.

Paolo shook his head. “I am not too sure, since it’s my first time here. But I’ve never heard of that being done before.”

James looked at the couple with a steady gaze. “Did you hand the box over to the manager of La Fenice?”

“No,” Francesca replied. “They weren’t there yet around 6:15 a.m. when we arrived. So we left the box in the storage place.”

James then asked, “Okay, and when did you come back to the villa?”

“About 6:30,” Francesca replied.

James nodded and pressed further. “Can you describe in detail what you did after you returned?”

Paolo exchanged a glance with Francesca before speaking. “When we came back, we found the door to the villa was open. It wasn’t locked.”

Francesca added, “We thought Ms. Mancini might have left it open for us — to let us in easily.”

Paolo continued, “So we stepped inside. We’d only been in the hallway for a minute or two when suddenly we heard a scream — from a man, coming from the second floor, from Ms. Mancini's bedroom.”

Francesca’s voice trembled as she recalled, “We rushed up there and knocked on the door, asking if everything was okay, but there was no answer.”

Paolo took over again, “We then found the spare key and opened the door ourselves.”

Francesca swallowed hard. “And then... we saw them. Ms. Mancini dead on the bed and the man lying on the ground with blood.”