'Hotel Portofino's Season 1 Finale Brings the "Denouements"
It's the end of the first season of Hotel Portofino. Despite a clunky debut episode, the show was able to right the ship. The finale begins with a beautiful sunny morning. It's the sort that makes you feel like going for a swim, sketching a stunning landscape (and a young woman you fancy), or catching a train to perpetrate the final stage of a carefully planned fraud. After accusing everyone from Pelham Wingfield, Jack Turner, and Vincenzo Danioni of the theft, it was Cecil who stole his own painting.
In Genoa, Mr. Ainsworth meets with a private art dealer and reveals how he pulled off the heist right under everyone's nose with the aid of his accomplice, Francesco. Cecil rakes in over £60,000 in payments for his family heirloom (not including the check Jack Turner gave him). He immediately goes to the bank to cash his ill-gotten gains; then, in a final act of deceit, Cecil sends his brother a telegram explaining that the painting was not a Rubens and that he will wire his share of the £1000 sale price soon.
When Mr. Ainsworth returns, flowers in hand, he's forgotten his brutal abuse and lies to Bella, saying the painting was insured. He's jovial until he registers the damage he has done to his wife's face. He blames her, saying he was "a little more heavy-handed than perhaps was necessary" – as if that counts as an apology! Claudine witnesses this interaction. She invites Bella to her room and tends to her cuts. A tearful Bella thanks her for being sisterly, a word that has defined Claudine since we met her.
