A nice episode, quite interesting, I liked it.
Plot details first:
We meet famous actress Nora Chandler. Her assistant of many years, Jean Davis, is in a relationship with Jerry Parks. Nora doesn’t like that, because she thinks it’s all just pretending on Jerry’s part, because he’s a journalist, one of those that know people’s secrets and when it’s just little gossip they write it down, when it’s something more interesting they blackmail. Jean insists that they love each other, and that she’d never talk to him about Nora. As soon as she’s out of sight, Jerry blackmails Nora for something that happened years before, and that cost that company making that money two million dollars.
Now we see Nora giving her a list of things to do for her, like picking up her clothes at the dry cleaners and stuff. Jean is a little annoyed, but drives away. We see Nora following her and looking at her while she meets Jerry at the book shop, and then Nora is outside Jerry’s house, pouring two tins of gasoline on the floor and creating a trail. As soon as the car stops there, she lights it up and the car goes up in flames, killing the driver.
Nora is reached at a restaurant to tell her that there was an accident, and at first she thinks Jerry was the victim, then she faints when they tell her that Jean is the one who died.
When Colombo arrives at her house, he’s really exited, he tells her he’s been in love with her all his life… and then he calls home, and since his wife is out, he has her say hello to his brother-in-law George.
Apparently Jean’s car got a flat tyre or something, so after the book shop she got Jerry to give her his, so she could do her work, and then she went to his house. It’s supposed that the murderer thought Jerry was driving and tried to kill him. Thinking this, Colombo starts talking to Jerry, trying to find out who might want to kill him. He also keeps talking to Nora and telling her stuff, as he usually does, to see their reactions.
Colombo is especially troubled by the tyre, because it had been checked recently, and it appears to be in good shape, there’s nothing wrong about it that they can find… and this will eventually convince Colombo that she was indeed the intended victim, not Jerry, because it wasn’t an accident impossible to foresee, someone sabotaged Jean’s tyre so that she’d be forced to take his car since she had work to do. This ruse was because as a blackmailer, Jerry has lots of enemies, while Jean didn’t.
Nora herself reveals that little scandal that Jerry knew about her, she reveals to show Colombo that she had no reason to kill Jerry, but then when he tells her that Jean was the target, she pretends an attempt on his life, by almost running him over with her car, or with a car anyway, to change Colombo’s mind.
But looking at an old film on tv, one that George warned him was on, he sees Nora dressed with a raincoat and hat, pretending to be a man, and it suddenly hits him.
Years before, Nora’s husband disappeared, he was seen going out sailing, but he never came back and he was declared dead, but now Colombo sees how easily she could have played his part, her husband was not tall, people might have seen her instead and thought it was him… and indeed that’s what happened. Nora married him for her career but came to love him, and she had to bear his infidelity, but when he started taking girls home, their home, it hurt too much and she hit him and he died and she buried him in the garden, and then put a fountain on it, taken from the studios. A fountain with no water because of course she could not allow anyone to dig under it.
To get his proof, Colombo tells her that when Jerry was almost run over, he had an envelope with him, with a ring inside. Jerry had alluded on other stuff he had on Nora, but they thought it was just empty words, but now Colombo tells her he had this ring, and shows it to her, and it looks like her husband’s ring, so she runs home and runs straight out towards the garden, and that’s when Colombo confronts her with the evidence that she ran straight there, to the fountain. She’d been wondered if Jerry or someone found it, dig it out. Because twelve years ago she had killed her husband, and Jean knew about it, apparently, and with Jerry in her life now…
A curiosity: Edith Head, the costume designer featured in this episode, is the real one, and those oscars on her desk are real ones that she had already won.
Nora was played by Anne Baxter, Jerry by Mel Ferrer
About Colombo’s home life, I’ say it’s for sure that he has a brother-in-law named George. Sure because he says it when he’s alone and calling home, not when he is with some suspect or others. He calls home an says “It’s me, put her on” but she’s not home so he speaks to George. She’s always out, but George is always in…
Colombo also says that he does have another car, his wife drives it.
Colombo is given a new tie, a pretty one that he’ll keep for special occasion, he still wants his own back to use for every day.
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