Gray Hat
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 180 of 200.
Naples, Monday, March 28, 1938, 9 p.m. In the harbor police room, the funnel of the steamer Aretusa smokes over the wet quay, but the ship is not sailing for Palermo tonight: Rome ordered her held.
On Friday night, Professor Ruggero Bellandi, 31, a theoretical physicist at the university, boarded her for Palermo. He left the institute's director a letter begging forgiveness for his “sudden disappearance.”
On Saturday he wired from Palermo: “Do not be alarmed. Returning tomorrow on the Aretusa.” The shipping line swears his ticket was handed in at Naples in the early hours of Sunday. Since then, nobody has found him, dead or alive.
The police chief wrote in the file: the dead get found, only the living disappear. Three people crossed the professor's path. One of them knows where he is.
Harbour police office in Naples, 1938, at night, a window facing the quay and a steamship.
Suspects
Nicola ScarpatiPurserpurser Officer on a passenger ship in charge of tickets, cargo papers, accounts and the passengers' needs. of the steamer Aretusa, 46
Ornella VitielloThe professor's assistant at the physics institute, 23
Calogero FazzariProfessor of mathematics at the University of Palermo, cabin 7 passenger, 57
The real case
Ettore Majorana and the Naples ferry
Naples and Palermo, Italy, 1938
Read the real case