A trainee police office, receives a call early one morning just before Christmas from Cipolla, the cleaner at Via Maggio 58 and goes round to find an Englishman called people dead in his ground floor flat, which is full of antiques. 2, who is ill an so could not take the call, pays a brief visit and say that Cipolla’s wife has just dide.
Since people come from an important family in Britain, two English detectives arrive to help with the investigation.
A little girl on the second floor says she heard two bangs in the night: one was the sound of the downstairs door and the other was a gunshot.
Eventually, the police conclude that people was exporting antiques illegally as the fingerprints of several different people have been found on the Englishman’s furniture.
People had been waiting for someone although nothing had been stolen. Additionally, Miss White from upstairs tells the English police that furniture was often moved in and out of people flat in the middle of the night.
Believing that the antique dealer, Cesarini, from the first floor, is involved in the murder and the illegal trade, the police trap him entering the Englishman’s flat in the middle of the following night with two other men.
But the police have no evidence to link Cesarini with any crime.
Finally, the Marshal sent for Cipolla who tells him that his wife had worked for the Englistman who had refused to pay he. Cippolla had gone there and shot him almost by accident while in a state of ange and grief.