Colombo - Troubled waters

In this ep we see Colombo out of his usual zone: on a cruise, no coat, wearing only a shirt with no jacket... it starts with Colombo running to catch the ship, wondering where his wife might be but they tell him that she's on board already. We never see her of course, but we hear about her a lot since it seems that they keep losing each other and he spends his free time looking for her :-p
The protagonists of this case's ep are Danziger, a man with an older, rich wife; the singer he had an affair with, Rosanna, and Lloyd, the musician that was in love with Rosanna and kept around her even after she told him she didn't want anything to do with him anymore.
Rosanna is now a threat to Danziger because she could ruin his marriage, so he kills her. Quite an elaborate plan, it would have worked for sure if he wasn't so unlucky to do it when Colombo was around... this is why I love these shows, because the protagonists care enough to keep at it until they find the truth, while all the secondary characters are well satisfied with the easy solution handed to them, but these shows also make you wonder how many innocent might be in trouble because there was no Colombo to save them. In this ep, without Colombo, Lloyd would have been screwed for sure, everyone was happy and eager to call him a murderer and be done with it. Only Colombo kept investigating.
Danziger broke a phial inhaling something to provoke/simulate a heart attack in the swimming pool, so he was brought to the infirmary and kept there until the next day, and this would have provided him a solid alibi.
At night, while the band took their usual break, he sneaked out, took a pair of gloves from the infirmary, used the stairs for the staff, took a uniform to walk unnoticed, entered her room with a key he made for himself earlier, killed her by shooting her thru a pillow, used her lipgloss to write an L on the mirror, left the uniform and the gun in the laundry, and sneaked back into the infirmary and into his bed, ready for the nurse when she came to take his pressure.
Knowing that there was a detective on board, when the body was discovered by a member of the band (since she was late for the show), Colombo was called to take a look. He was a bit seasick to they suggested him going to the infirmary, where he found a pillow-feather that raised his suspicions. From that moment on, he keeps digging until he's able to break Danziger's story and find proof that he's the murderer.
All these rich guys think so low of Colombo that never find it strange that he asks for their 'help' so often, accepting very easily the idea that such a dumb man might need their help what with them being so much smarter... and also very much full of themselves, the idiots.
Danziger planted the receipt of the gun in Lloyd's room, and everyone seems to accept his involvement quite easily, despite Lloyd protesting that he never bought a gun and never murdered anyone. Only Colombo believes him, and even tells him so.
Colombo asks the doctor if it is possible that Danziger might have faked the heart attack, and then goes to the swimming pool and is able to retrieve the phial he used. There's also the fact that (obviously) Danziger's pressure was much higher when taken after the murder, you know, with all that running upstairs. Many little things but still no proof.
Still, his relentless investigation is worrying Danziger. When Colombo tells him that there is nothing he can do to definitely connect Lloyd to the murder, since he used gloves so the gun has no fingerprints and the gloves where never found, Danziger thinks he better provide him with a pair of gloves with gunpowder on them so Colombo can arrest Lloyd and be done with it. He steals another pair of gloves, takes the gun of the 'magician' of the show and shoots with it to get gunpowder on the gloves, then hides them where they will eventually be found.
When this happens, Colombo uses the gloves inside out, not checking for gunpowder outside, but checking the fingerprints inside, sure that they are Danziger's and not Lloyd's. At this point, Danziger has no way of explaining why would he do that... and it's the end for him.
Lloyd was played by Dean Stockwell with big moustache and big curly hair :lol: what a look, I'm glad I always saw him with short hair :-D
ITA assassinio a bordo