A curse — or a blessing in disguise

The death of Francesco Cenci has the ring of a contemporary crime. A wealthy, well-connected man is killed when he steps onto a balcony which inexplicably gives way beneath him. Within days of his burial, local gossip suggests that it was no accident — the hole in the balcony is too small for anyone to slip through. Investigators discover blood-stained bed-clothes, and when the body is exhumed the skull is found to have been caved in by blows from an axe. Under questioning, Francesco’s servants reveal that he was killed on the orders of his wife and daughter aided by two sons.

The Cenci murder took place in Italy in 1598, but what gave it a resonance that seems modern in every age since were the motives of the murderers. Francesco was a bisexual sadist: he forced his wife into multiple couplings with male and female prostitutes, sodomised his stableboys, imprisoned his daughter, Beatrice, whipped her in sight of witnesses with a bull’s-pizzle sjambok and, allegedly, raped her.