It was nice, I liked it enough, all the characters were interesting and Columbo was his usual self, although I prefer when he has a more active role, in a way, I mean he was of course doing the investigating here, but he had to share the spotlight with the others. Still, since the others were not bad, that is ok.
This murder was not planned, and therefore it was rather badly done; it starts with a General receiving the visit of a colonel. The colonel is worried because there’s going to be an investigation on some money transactions. The colonel is in charge of all those deals, he signed off on those acquiaitions at such high prices from the general’s factory, or something. Now he comes to warn the general about it, saying that he’ll run away, he took leave for a month, intending to go to Switzerland and never come back, and never be found, but the general can’t be sure of that. The general is worrid that he will indeed be found, and at that point he might want to give his name to save himself… so he takes a gun and shoots him.
Right at that moment, a boat is sailing outside, and a woman is sure she saw a man in a bathrobe shoot a man in uniform. Her mother doesn’t believe her, but she is so sure of what she saw she calls the police. A couple of policemen arrive, and cop Sanchez talks to her, but when he hears what house she saw it happening in, he calls the station to say that maybe it would be better to send someone more important than a mare cop like him… basically I think he wanted to avoid going there, and he was lucky that they agreed and sent Columbo.
Well, Columbo goes and checks, but in that house there is no body, no stains, no clue whatsoever, there’s only the general as calm as he always is, and two men about to carry out a big box full of stuff that he’s giving to the museum. Of course Columbo looks inside it, it would be really too obvious and too easy.
The general says earlier in the day he was wearing a baathrobe, and then he tried on one of the uniforms he was to donate to the museum, and suggested that someone saw that… and yet Mrs Stewart is very firm on what she saw, she insists on it… taking offence when Colombo asks her if she had been drinking… well, she wasn’t on the boat, but she often is otherwise, who wouldn’t living all the time with her mother! A woman who doesn’t believe her for a second, and blames her for her failed marriage, because had she accepted her husband’s infidelity without fuss, she’d still be married…
We see that the general hid the body inside a hidden room in his house, and after going out drinking with other military men, he comes home and takes his big boat, or yatcht, out, to dispose of the body.
The general asked the man renting the boats about Mrs Stewart, and gets her address, so he goes to her house to say that she accused him of something he didn’t do and if she watched the news on tv she’ll heard of how mistaken she was… which seemed a bit silly really. Anyway, it works in the way that they keep seeing each other and she stops talking about it, on the contrary she insists now that she was probably mistaken. The general is quite convincing when he says that with the sun that way she could not see what she said she saw, and he’s also quite charming to a lonely woman like her…
And yet the colonel’s body comes up, it had been tied to a dead weight with a rope, and maybe some sharks ate the rope or whatever. Point is, the body was found merely two weeks after that call to the police. Now Colombo can easily see the connection, and the motive, and everything is clear but he can’t place the colonel anywhere near the general’s house and there’s no murder weapon… until he realises that the general is very proud of all his accomplishments and quite vain, and suddenly he can’t believe that he would let anybody steal his precious gun that was like a symbol of him, so important to his image… the general said there’s merely a copy at the museum, but Colombo is now sure it’s the real one, and has the bullet examined, and the general is busted.
Poor woman she really convinced herself that she had been mistaken and that her life was changing, instead she’s back living with her mom…
The last scene sees Colombo trying to comfort her by telling her of a niece that got remarried and had six children… but this woman got the measure of him and asks him if he’s really got a niece, and he replies that of course he has one… and she’s three. Because Colombo always says a lot of things that help him in his investigation, to seem harmless or to better approach someone or some situation, but that’s not necessarily the truth, I don’t think many of what he did was true.
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