Columbo - The most crucial game

 A good episode, I liked to see Colombo in this, listening to the football match, hunting for new shoes, dealing with a private investigator or with a girl who thought he was a ‘client’…

The murder case itself wasn’t really all that much, especially because I still don’t know why he did it… not really, the guy was a real pain but murder… I’m not sure. 

Details: 

Paul Hanlon knew Eric’s father, and because of that after the man died he took the reins of everything and managed it all with success. It’s something to do with sports, managing teams, football and apparently also  basketball. Maybe more, I don’t know. Anyway, I guess that after Eric’s death he would be even more in control, since Eric’s widow seems to trust this Paul completely.  Maybe that’s enough of a reason.

So, Paul is at the stadium for a game, and when he calls the coach he sounds angry, says he wants to talk, but the game’s starting and he has to wait. Then he changes into a vendor’s outfit, goes out the servant’s exit, takes a ice-cream truck and drives to Eric’s house. Eric just had a wild night, since the wife’s away he liked to party with girls…

Paul calls him from a phone booth, saying he is still at the game, using a radio to ‘prove it’. Then he shows up at Eric’s house much earlier than expected, of course. Eric is still in the swimming pool, he comes up to talk to him and Paul strikes him with a big piece of ice. Then he runs away, and is back in his office for the end of first time, when the coach comes to talk to him, but he’s got nothing to say now.

It’s a Sunday, and everyone’s pretty annoyed to be there, even Colombo wanted to listen to the radio to follow the game. Everyone seems satisfied to call it an accident, like Eric took a dive but hit his head, or something. Still, Colombo can always spot a murder. (Ok, one thing I don’t see how it could be: Paul sprayed water to cancel his own tracks, literally, but how could Colombo find that water without Chlorine? I mean, those that went down, got mixed with the pool water, and those that didn’t go down either evaporated from the sun or got really low to the ground, how could he ‘taste it’ to prove it had no chlorine? I missed something here, I guess.

Anyway, there’s the detail of the water, then a child said she saw the ice-cream truck who didn’t give her any and drove away, and in that area there should be no truck of that company. Most of all I think it’s Paul’s attitude that make Colombo suspicious, like he lowers the radio volume for everything but anytime he mentions something like ‘it’s murder, not an accident’ or stuff like that, he switches the radio off. 

Anyway, for whatever reason Colombo is sure it’s him, but the alibi holds… Then Colombo waits for the private investigator to show up, knowing there was one because he had found the bugs, he knew Eric’s phones where bugged. Colombo took the guy’s license and stuff, wanting informations out of him. Then it comes out that Paul’s phones were bugged too, by Eric’s lawyer who wanted to show them that Paul was not to be trusted, but Eric’s wife does and gets angry at him instead. 

Because of that, there’s recordings of all their calls, and there’s also the call that he made from the public phone, saying that he was at the game… and Colombo keeps listening to it over and over trying to find something wrong to prove that Paul was not at the game at all…until he realises what he’s looking for. Not something that’s in it, but something that is NOT in it. Had Paul been at the game, at that same hour there should have been the sound of the clock that is behind him in his ‘office’ or whatever, at the game. But it wasn’t there. Busted.

Now, I don’t really see why, was he on the phone at precisely 1430? I thought it was 1420 or something, and he sure didn’t speak for ten minutes, it was one or two tops.

Anyway:

The shoes: Colombo ruined his shoes in the swimming pool, so he had to buy a new pair. For a while he looks at other men’s shoes, asking where they bought theirs, then he wears new ones who hurt his feet, and finally a better pair (it’s another pair or the same one that is no more that stiff? Boh)

The P.I. Colombo was rather in his element here, he didn’t have to pretend to be overly deferential towards the suspects or others, he could put things as they were and treat things as it suited him, such as keeping the guy’s stuff until he got all the informations he wanted.

The girl: the PI told Colombo that he used a girl to bugged both Paul and Eric’s phone, he had her go work for Paul and because of that she had access to Eric’s place too. After three days she got fired though. Colombo goes to talk to her, who thinks he’s the ‘client’ she was waiting for, until he manages to explain that he’s not. She appears to have no time at all to talk to him, though, since her real client appears, but he leaves right away as soon as Colombo reveals he’s with the police. She’s right pissed about it, and the more she gets angry the more she reveals her true accent, so he understand she must be that girl that kept calling Paul that day right after the death. Colombo knows that someone as sly as Paul might very well get  her immediately, and so he did, but he bought her silence. He knew about the phones being bugged and used it to his defense by making that phone call, knowing it’d be recorded.

Curious detail: sometimes, in the curiosities around the internet, you can read that Colombo said he had a cousin, or a sister-in-law… he very very often speaks about his family, but I don’t think everything’s to be taken so literally, sometimes he invests stuff just to talk and see people’s reaction or to get them to talk to him… In this episode he says that his wife is angry at the ice-cream trucks that drive around just before lunch spoiling the child’s appetite… what child? He never spoke about children before (or after, in other episodes I mean). The only sure thing is that he has a wife, but everything else has to be taken in with more than a grain of salt. Remember when that girl asked him if he really had that … relative (was it a cousin, niece or whatever… ) and he said that he did, but that it was just a little girl or something. It was the last scene in Dead Weight I think.