Columbo - Blueprint for murder

 Nice, really nice. I liked it. I liked the side character of Goldie a lot, and everything about Colombo, and even the second wife Jennifer was nice. Of course, the male characters, both murder and victim, were not so nice, but that’s rather normal, murderers are never nice people.  

PLOT details: Markham is a famous architect, and he has the ambition to build a whole new block that he will call Williamson City, by the name of the man who finances him. Actually Beau Williamson knows nothing about it, but his second wife Jennifer does, sh oh so admires Markham, she thinks he’s a genius, and she approved everything about his project and gave him the money to start the process. Beau was abroad, but now he’s back and as soon as he learns about it he storms into Markham’s office in a fury, then goes to the building site where everyone can see how angry he is. Markham tries to calm him down, but Beau tells him that he will not pay for it, and to not even think about getting his hands on his money after his death, because Jennifer won’t get the money, the bank will have the job of administering all of it and giving Jennifer the profits or something… I don’t know if he was thinking about his health, or about a strange light in Markham’s eyes, when he said it.

So, Markham follows him to some place where Beau was looking at one of his horses, and then Markham shows himself and kills him, even if we don’t see the actual kill. We see Markham going to his home though, and taking stuff clearly to pretend that Beau has gone away on his own. 

Next thing we know, Colombo shows up looking for a Mrs Williamson who called the police. Jennifer knows nothing about it, she’s sure Beau is away for work, but Goldie knows better. She’s the first wife, married for 22 years. Beau remarried a woman much younger, but they were still friends, and he always called her when he went away.  Colombo doesn’t know what to say, Jennifer is totally calm, Markham says Beau is always traveling, and Goldie says he’s dead… but then Beau’s car is found. At the airport, as if he flew away. But Colombo notices that the car is full of music tapes of country/folk music, but the radio is set on classical music… and sure enough Markham’s office is full of classical music LPs.

Beau also had an appointment with his doctor concerning his pacemaker… all things that seem to agree with Goldie’s suspicions. Then Colombo finds out about that clause about the money going to the bank if he dies. He is sure now that Beau is dead and Markham killed him, but has no proof and no body. 

It’s Markham himself that tells Colombo to dig at the building site and see for himself if he did hide the corpse there, and so Colombo really goes to the offices that regulate all that bureaucracy to get all the permits he needs to do exactly that. It takes a long time, he has to stand in line many times, many queues try his patience… but he is a patient man, no doubt about that.

He gets all the papers done, and they start digging; Markham is there to play angry and mock him, the journalists are there because Markham called them, and Goldie is there for support, sure that Colombo will find Beau’s body… but Colombo doesn’t, there’s nothing there and he looks subdued and defeated.

That night Markham goes to get Beau’s body from where it was hidden, because the next morning it will all get filled with cement again, so he can’t wait, this is his chance to get rid of the body for good. 

But Colombo is there, at the building site, waiting for him because he knew that’s what he was waiting for, and Colombo needed him to get the body because he had no idea where it could be. Now that they have the body in Markham’s car, they can arrest him.