Well, this wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t good either, it’s quite in the middle, really nothing special though. The main character is very arrogant and full of himself, a famous painter, an artist who has three women and demands they get along so he can have whatever he wants whenever he wants. Really, this Max Barsini lives with his second wife Vanessa and his young model Julie and their nextdoor neighbour is his first wife Louise, and he wants them to have dinners together and everything.
It all changes when he finds out that she’s seeing again her old psychologist, only for personal reasons now. They have a relationship and she wants to leave and live with him. She vaguely mentions something that happened in the past but sh’s adamant that she’d never do anything against him, or to cause him trouble. God only knows why.
He decides to kill her and prepares well. He goes to Vito’s, it’s a bar with a small apartment upstairs where he used to live with Louise when they were younger and broke. Max says he’ll paint something for him that will attract people to his bar, but while he’s supposed to be there behind a big canvas painting, he’s actually sneaking out to reach the small beach where he knows he’ll find her. Louise always went swimming, and he starts with friendly words, to depart as friends… and then covers her mouth with the rag and the white spirit that he uses to clean the brushes. After she’s passed out, he carries her into the water where he drowns her.
I’s supposed to look like an accident, but of course there are details, like the fact that she only had one contact lense in her eyes, the other one was in its box, so she was interrupted… and also the smudge of colour on her face. It wasn’t lipstick, it was oil paint, and a specific colour indeed, the one called Barsini red because he makes it himself, of course. And there’s lipstick traces on the rag.
When Max mentions doing a portrait, Colombo accepts with enthusiasm, so he has the perfect chance to spend time together to talk to him and they listen together to the recordings of Louise’s nightmares, three of them, a bit different but all three alluding of a man with a monocle that they knew years before. This Harry was Max’s agent when he was starting out, and not an honest one. More than once he sold someone’s art and never gave them the money. Colombo is sure that Max killed him, and probably buried him in Vito’s basement, but he can prove nothing about that. What he can prove is this murder, because of the colour and lipstick.
Colombo had also noticed that in the apartment where Max was supposed to have painted that last piece, the water was all mud, hadn’t been used in a long time, so he hadn’t used it to clean the brushes of the spirit, and also that there were no paint stains on the floor.
After a lot of shouting,because of course neither of them is happy with the situation, finally Vanessa and Julie actually talk to one another and decide to do something for their own sake instead of always for Max, so they both leave him.
Colombo’s portrait is quite nice :)
ITA autoritratto di un assassino
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