Skeleton key to Tuscan mystery

An American couple have been surprised by the discovery that their idyllic Tuscan farmhouse contained an unexpected extra feature: the skeleton of a man who walled himself into the basement some 44 years ago.

Nemo Cianelli, 57, left a message in a bottle explaining to later generations that he had decided to take his own life because he had an incurable disease and wanted to spare his family grief.

Mr Cianelli had told his relatives he was travelling to the United States, packed a suitcase and disappeared - into the basement, with a rifle and a bricklayer's trowel.

On Saturday, workmen broke through a bricked-up door to create space for the owner's wine cellar.

"My husband and son-in-law found the bones immediately, together with a suicide note," said Faye Beuby, whose family bought the house in the hill-top village of Benabbio two years ago. "We found a rifle lying between the leg bones."

Mrs Beuby, who comes from San Francisco and whose husband Stephen is a London-based civil engineer, said: "I felt very sad for the family. The letter is very sensitive and intense," she said.

"None of us are fearful about continuing to live here. You could say it's just an added feature that wasn't included in the purchase agreement."

Mr Cianelli's doctor, however, has given an extra twist to the mysterious death of the "terminally ill" man. Dr Francesco De Paulis said Mr Cianelli, whose first name means "no one" in Latin, had been in perfectly good health when he died.