Columbo - The conspirators

 This one I didn’t like much, no. I wouldn’t watch it again, now that I’ve even written about it and therefore can save myself from it. Personally I didn’t like this character at all, and he never stopped talking… and of course I’m not fond of talking about wars, whatever the cause or the reason, if only people would just stop it… but that is childish thinking, humankind loves wars and fighting and all that stuff.

This one sees Joe Devlin in town for a book signing, he wrote about his life, calls himself a poet, but he’s actually here ( in LA) to buy American weapons and ship them off to Northern Ireland. Together with Mrs O’Connell and her son George, they raise money saying it will be used for widows and orphans of the war, but instead they use it to buy weapons. 

His contact is Vincent Pauley who approaches him at his book signing. When they meet at Devlin’s house, they agree on the type of weapon and on how many, they bargain on the price to get them. Much earlier and part ways for the moment. 

Next time they meet at Pauley’s hotel room, where Devlin should give him the money for the promise of getting all the goods before the ship sails, but Devlin knows everything that Pauley did since they met, I don’t know how but he probably had someone trail him. He knows that Pauley bought a ticktet for Lisbona while he should have stayed there to guarantee the delivery or something, point is Devlin is sure that Pauley wanted to betray him, to get the money and flee. Devlin shoots him right there. Then he searches the room and gets every little piece of paper he can find, because he still needs the weapons and wants to find the supplier’s name or number. 

He wants to kick himself when the police shows up at his door so very soon: he didn’t think of the book that Pauley had him sign for him, and that brought Colombo right at his door. If only he had taken that book away, it would have been much much more difficult to connect him to the case…

So Colombo arrives and Devlin denies knowing the name or the face, he signed lots of books… but there were two words written in that book by Devlin himself, Ourselves Alone, which is some kind of terrorists motto of that fight. Colombo finds his reactions very strange and he’s right away his favourite suspect. 

Colombo also meets Mrs O’Connell and her son, who are very rich. She’ doing needlework, Colombo immediately admires her needlepoint, saying his nephew likes it, it relaxes him before his weight lifting contests, and later says that he won second place for the needlework and first place for the lifting…

Colombo is now sure that they wanted to buy weapons from Pauley, especially when he finally finds out what a clue meant and finds the ship, and sees Devlin talking to the captain. He has the ship inspected, but nothing can be found and so they have to let it go… but Colombo recognizes in the two shit the flag of the. O’Connell, and so he understands that they put the weapons in there, waiting to load them onto the ship, so he stop it !

Devlin is caught because he spent a lot of time with Devlin, who really loves Irish whiskey, and Devlin has the habit of making a sign on the bottle with his diamond ring, and Colombo found the same sign on the bottle in Pauley’s room. Busted.

P.s. The phrase Devlin keeps repeating, also written on the bottle of whisky, is Let each man be paid in full.