Columbo - Mind over Mayhem

 It was nice… but all that technology, it must have been like science fiction back then, but now it all looks a bit silly… and that robot, that should be able to do everything like a man… come on, really, it was so big, with tongs as hands… everything happens at this big institute where everything is the top of technology… and maybe it was, back then…

Anyway:

The plot: 

Chemist Nicholson tells Cahill, the director of the institute where he works, that his son Neil Cahill can not receive any prize for ‘his discovery’, because Nicholson knows that it’s plagiarism, that it was all Finch’s work, and Neil used to work with him and now he stole his idea because Finch is dead. Nicholson insists that he won’t let it go, that Neil himself must confess or he’ll reveal it all.

Cahill is rather pissed, and immediately sets his plan in motion . That night the professor will be alone, because his young wife Margaret will be at the hospital, as the night psychologist or something. Cahill sends the child-scientist at the cinema, with their mechanic to escort him since the movie is not open to children who are not with an adult. This is important because without the child Steve, who created the big robot, Cahill can now use it to make himself an alibi. He is responsible for some war simulations, but he stays in the control room while all the others are in another room, so nobody actually sees him until the end of the simulation. So, he programs the robot to imput all the necessary data while he goes out, picks a car from the carpark, not the one assigned to him of course, and goes to Nicholson’s house. Margaret leaves, then Cahill makes some noise so Nicholson comes out his lab; Cahill runs him over with the car, then picks him up and carries him inside the house, where he overthrows a few chairs and stuff to make it look like a robbery. Of course he took the wallet and wristwatch, and also a tin of heroine from the lab, three things that he destroyed with some acid. Cahill put two glasses of wine on the table, and lit himself a good cigar… I don’t know, he’s supposed to be smart, but this looks like a mess to me, a rather stupid mess. Also, when he carried Nicholson’s body, I think he noticed that Nicholson’s shoe left marks on the door, but didn’t do anything about it.

Anyway, Columbo is notified and goes immediately to work, with his dog because he can’t find anywhere to leave him, even the school for dogs rejected him…    Colombo notices everything around, the lighter Nicholson used to light his pipe, and also the pipe outside on the road, in pieces … and of course the fact that Cahill smokes cigars…

Colombo wonders around the institute looking for clues, a motive and a way for Cahill to do it, and speaking to Steve he learns about the robot of course, and understands the how. For a long while he doesn’t know the why, but at the end Neil confesses it all to the world. Still, Colombo had no way to prove his theory, so he had a man pretend to be a witness to Neil’s relationship with Martha, to use that as a motive for him to kill her husband, since she’s younger enough to have been Nicholson’s daughter (Colombo actually called him her father to her face, before knowing they were married). This relationship is all a lie, f course, but Neil indeed gets arrested and taken away, all in hope that his father will confess to protect him. Cahill hesitates, but at the end he doesn’t have the courage to call Colombo’s bluff, not when it’s his son’s life at stake, so he confesses.

Cahill thought he was so much smarter, and yet Colombo had him from the start, because he knew from a match found in the house that the murderer was a cigar smoker, like him. 

ITA l’omicidio del professore