I like this episode, it was fun. Sure, these two actors (meaning the characters were actors) were a bit boring at times, they never stopped speaking or acting, but the episode was good anyway because we have Colombo in London, and he’s his usual puppy self, running around taking pictures, curious about everything :) It was lovely, this character is always lovely :)
So, details: for a while we have only the actors, Nickolas Frame and Lillian his wife, they’re rehearsing the Macbeth; they’re loud and dramatic in everything they do - for the whole episode, as soon as there is someone there, even just one person, they start acting.
The theater is property of Sir Roger Haversham, who put this show together because he was having an affair with Lillian… or so he thought, but the night of the final rehearsal Sir Roger comes to her dressing room quite angry, saying he knows everything. When she says she bought tickets for the two of them in secret, he tells her she’s a liar, that her husband bought them. He claims that Nicky knows everything about the two of them, and that she was never sincere in her affection, he says that they tricked him into giving them a show, since he’s a producer. Nicky hears him and comes in, but nothing either of them says can change Sir Roger’s mind, he seems determined to have nothing more to do with them, starting with the Macbeth, he wants to stop it. They argue, of course, and then the two men sort of fight, and Lillian throws her jar of cream at him, hitting Sir Roger on the head, and he falls down… dead. Yeah, just like that.
It was an accident, in a way, yes, but they don’t want to reveal the truth to anybody. Nobody would believe that Sir Roger came and attacked Nicky, and the other way around won’t make them look good at all, and all that stuff makes them decide to hide it all. Since nobody knows that Sir Roger came here tonight, they think, we can just bring his body back home, and hide the whole thing, make it look like a home accident… and they almost succeed, but of course they couldn’t know Colombo would be there…
Thing is, Colombo is in London on an official visit, to learn the new investigative methods of Scotland Yard, and it’s all very nice. At first it seems that the Scotland Yard agent lost him at the airport, then he finds him but is quite sorry that Colombo lost his bag. Then they need to stop the car many many times because Colombo wants to take pictures of everything… and finally he meets detective Durk, chief of Scotland Yard. Since Durk knew Sir Roger - since he’s his wife’s aunt’s husband’s brother or something like that - they stop briefly at the house, where Colombo wants to know everything that happened. The body has been taken away already, but still, Colombo’s very curious about these things.
Lillian had put Sir Roger’s hat, coat and umbrella in his wardrobe, and they put the body at the bottom of the big staircase, to make it look like he fell down the stairs and died. Colombo starts asking questions, he notices a lot of things. Tanner was Sir Roger’s butler, and he can answer most of their questions. Apparently it wasn’t strange for Sir Roger to relax at home reading a book wearing his jacket and tie, and there’s no comments on the way he would ruin his first edition Alice in Wonderland by bending the book that way, but the glasses are something that nobody can overlook. If Sir Roger was supposed to be reading before he went downstairs, then he needed reading glasses, like most people that age, and indeed he used glasses, and had the habit of putting them in his pocket… so Chief Durk will have someone check, and indeed they find the glasses in his pocket… not smashed to pieces as if they had fallen down the stairs with him, but still whole. Making them suspect he didn’t fall at all. Then the postmortem (which they discuss at their men’s club where Colombo was supposed to eat something, poor man, but with those pictures he really couldn’t) made it clear that Sir Roger had been moved, that he did not die there. Also, his Rolls had rain stains on it, and it hadn’t rained where he lived, but it did rain in London.
So: Lillian and Nicky made a lot of dramatic scenes, on how Sir Roger meant to them, and stuff like that that was great publicity, and they learned there were doubts on his death, so they planted the story that they had given Sir Roger an important book, worth 30.000pounds, and it was now missing, but then Colombo wonders why the ‘robbers’ didn’t take anything else…
Colombo has Lillian give him a free ticket so he can see their show, and they’re over the moon over everybody’s compliments, but Colombo steps on some pearls that got broken the night of the fight, but Lillian and Nicky have an airtight story of how they always fight between themselves… and Colombo is amazed at how well they remember things, they almost use the same words…
Then Nicky sees a theatre worker with Sir Roger’s umbrella. The guy entered her dressing room to do some repairs, and on his way out he took a black umbrella… taking Sir Roger’s by mistake. Nicky is sure because there’s faded initials on it, and he saw it up close. So he spends some time at the pub with the man making him drink to take away his umbrella. They drive to Sir Roger’s house and have an excuse ready for Tanner so that she can enter his room and switch the umbrellas… only the other one is not there anymore, because some nephew agreed to give it to the wax museum, along with a jacket and hat. After hearing Tanner say that, they hurry there, almost hitting Colombo’s taxi (not sure if it was a taxi or a Yard-car taking him where he wants to go…). They rush to the wax museum, entering from a window, and make the exchange.
Colombo met the guy outside the pub, he was looking for him to ask if he saw Sir Roger that night, which he hasn’t, but while talking it comes out that someone stole his umbrella, and that he had just been drinking with Nicky and playing darts, and Colombo understands,, so he rushes to the house where Tanner tells him of the wax museum, and so he goes there, but they won’t do anything for him until Chief Durk arrives, and then they go look and they find that the umbrella there is the right one, the one that belonged to Sir Roger, Tanner is there to confirm it… Colombo is stunned, he can’t understand how that’s possible, he’s sure about his theory, so he understands that they must have switched it, even if the museum guy says the window is always closed…
Colombo doesn’t want to give up, and asks Tanner if anybody else asked about the umbrella, mentions the car that nearly hit him, but Tanner says nothing about Nicky and Lillian’s visit, not a word, for a very specific reason. The next morning he is at their door with some breakfast, saying that he told nobody about a certain umbrella, and that just like he was once loyal to Sir Roger and had therefore to tell him about Nicky buying those tickets, now if he worked for them he would be just as loyal to them, even more. Basically he blackmails them into hiring him as their butler… but they think on it long and hard (something like a day and a night) and then they decide to kill him to shut him up. They have him remove some books from Sir Roger’s house, and put them where he lived, they they hang him making it look like he stole the precious books and killed Sir Roger when he was found out, and then hung himself…
Obviously Colombo doesn’t believe that for a second. He was supposed to go back home that day (and his bag has finally been found), but he misses the train because he wants to try one last time to catch the murderers. He has them meet him at the wax museum, and he’s there with Chief Durk too. He explains how umbrella are left to dry, and sometimes things get into them by accident, and now he takes Sir Roger’s umbrella that is there at the museum and opens it wide and indeed one of those pearls rolls down. Nicky breaks down, he starts laughing and I don’t know what he was saying amid the laughing, maybe something from the Macbeth, he was having a nervous breakdown clearly. Lillian tried to tell him at first that it wasn’t true, that Colombo put it there, and then she started saying stuff like that it was an accident… which might have been met with more understanding before the Tanner murder. That was no accident, that was cold blooded murder.
The two are arrested, and Colombo explains to chief Durk how he learned to throw candies when he was a kid to impress a girl that he didn’t know how to approach…
The end. :)
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