Who sacked the mayor of Rome, the former transplant surgeon Ignazio Marino?
Was it his party boss, prime minister Matteo Renzi, annoyed with the antics of a potential centre-left rival?
Was it, indirectly, Pope Francis, little pleased with the man who established Rome’s first register of same-sex civil unions?
Or, worse still, was it political forces close to those organised crime gangs that have infiltrated City Hall so effectively that 37 people, most of them involved in the administration of the Eternal City, were arrested last December in the course of the “Mafia Capitale” investigation?
That investigation revealed a cynical exploitation of the managing of migrant centres. Many of those arrested are due to go on trial next month, charged with Mafia-type crime, including bribery, usuary and money laundering.
Annoyed everyone
The reality about Mr Marino, of the Democratic Party (PD), is that he had so annoyed a broad swathe of entrenched interests that his resignation late on Thursday night did not come as a surprise.
At the end of a dramatic day, the mayor finally bowed to the inevitable, but not without issuing a polemical communique in which, among other things, he expressed his fear that “the corrupt Mafia mechanisms will return”.
An independent figure within the PD who won the 2013 mayoral elections essentially without party support, Mr Marino has almost never appeared to benefit from the backing of either his party or its leader, Mr Renzi.
It is ironic that, last December, Mr Renzi and the PD party were on the point of dumping Mr Marino over a parking ticket “scandal” involving his wife’s car, when the Mafia Capitale investigation broke.
Many argued that it would be entirely inappropriate to sack Mr Marino who, not having been touched by the scandal, looked like the only honest man left standing.
Since then, Mr Marino has not helped himself by eating out (modestly) with his mayoral credit card and by going on holiday to the US in August.
That vacation came at the very moment Rome witnessed the spectacular public funeral of mafia godfather Vittorio Casamonica. Public opinion was left with the sense that the city was completely out of control – and that the mayor had gone badly missing.
Perhaps even more damaging to Mr Marino was his later US trip for the pope’s visit.
On the papal flight home, Pope Francis denied that the Vatican had invited the mayor, doing so in a manner which indicated he was thoroughly annoyed with Mr Marino.