Therefore, he argues, malice cannot be inferred, and a required finding of not guilty should have been entered. In Peruzzi, this court traced the “development of the concept of malice in malicious damage cases” to Commonwealth v. Walden, 57 Mass. 558, 3 Cush. 558 (1849), and Commonwealth v. Hosman, 257 Mass. 379, 154 N.E. 76 (1926). We concluded that “the Hosman decision ... reaffirm[ed] the holdings in the earlier cases that ‘something more than a deliberate intent to do a wrong’ must be shown to establish malice.