The Door to the Courtyard

Synopsis

In an apartment house in Milan, the door to the courtyard was locked in 1994, after what the building's records politely call the disagreement on the stairs. Thirty years later, at three minutes past three in the morning, it stood open.

Four voices reconstruct the evening. The porter, who saw nothing, saw it twice. The widow on the third floor, who heard everything and is prepared to describe the sound. The inspector, who trusts neither of them, and has kept one evidence bag unopened since 1994. And the fourth voice, which requested in writing not to be described.

Told entirely in interviews, telephone calls and the minutes of a residents' meeting that officially never took place, the episode closes with the one fact everybody agrees on: the door was locked from the outside.

"At 3:04, the door closed. What concerns the investigation is who was on which side."

The Door to the Courtyard is the second transmission in the WitWisdom Radio Theatre series. A giallo in the classic sense: black gloves, an unreliable apartment building, and everyone politely declining to have been there. Recorded in English in Markaryd, Sweden — considerably further from Milan than the acoustic would like you to believe.