This is the episode with Santini, played by Jack Cassidy. And it’s also the one where Columbo has a new coat, courtesy of his wife. He really hates his new coat, and spends teh whole episode trying to forget it somewhere or even have it stolen, anything :lol: Sgt Wilson is always taking it back whenever he ‘forgets’ it somewhere, he’s leaving it in the open car but nobody steals it… at the end he just gives up and takes his old one back :)
A nice episode, interesting, and with a sergeant Wilson that is now a bit better than he was before, but not at Columbo’s level yet :lol:
He still believes everything they want him to believe, but at least now he doesn’t doubt Columbo :)
The Great Santini is a magician working with his daughter (who has no relevance in the story whatsoever, it’s probably there because every magician must have a girl, so that people watch the girl more than him, and this way there was no gossip on potential relationships or affairs beween them - since there is no way people see a man and a woman working together and not imagine them a couple or at least sleeping together, people have a dirty mind, Freud was really onto something…
Anyway. As this is a Columbo episode, we know right away who did what and why and how: Jesse Jerome owns the place where Santini has his magic act, and now he insists on a bigger share. He tries to bully his way to more money by blackmailing Santini, because he knows that Santini was once Stefan Mueller, with the SS during the war, and he threatens and swears that he will send proof if this and expose him, and so Santini kills him. He plans it well, he does it during his show. When he’s supposed to be locked into a metal box, with handcuffs, he’s actually in his study downstairs. The people working there now this, of course, and there’s a man who always brings him a glass of scotch (or something). Santini uses microphone and headphones to talk to him and pretend he’s inside the room, while he’s actually moved already, because he only has like ten minutes. He has a simple game for the man, but one that was not so obvious back then, if you didn’t know it already. The man chooses a number between 1 and 4, and after saying what number it is, Santini tells him to look under something, where he has written the right solution. Of course, he wrote all four number under different things, that’s the illusion that he knew it…
Anyway, during this time, Santini goes upstairs wearing a waiter outfit since there’s so many workers and so much activity that nobody looks at him. He goes upstairs and kills the man, then goes back to his dressing room to change and hurry on stage for the end of the act.
Columbo notices things as usual. The body was in the middle of the room, and by its position Columbo thinks that he was walking towards the door, and by his sweaty shirt that he was sitting on his leather chair just before.
Santini ‘guesses’ right aawy that the murder must have happened while he was locked in the cage, and his attitude, plus his career, make Colombo suspect him already. Knowing that Jerome’s door lock was picked, Columbo has Santini free himself from a pair of handcuffs while on stage, Santini couldn’t avoid it, with the audience watching.
During that specific act, Colombo investigates if he really could do it - and here he asks Wilson Where’s Santini? And he naively replies that he’s in the water tank, where everyone has seen him go… sigh Wilson…
Anyway, Colombo finds Santini downstairs, in his dressing room, sure that Colombo would pay him a visit. Now Colombo knows he ‘could’ do it, indeed. But a waiter says that he was in there the whole time, because he spoke to him: Colombo perks up, ‘you didn’t see him?’, no indeed. So Colombo goes to a magic shop to ask a lot of questions (it’s funny to see him scared after the owner uses a fake small guillotine :lol:) and he learns the trick of guessing the number, and also of the simple device you could use to make someone believe that you’re in a place where you’re really in another.
Poor Colombo had a hard time asking questions in the kitchens, lots of people moving and hurrying and nobody paying attention to him, he actually had to raise his voice to call for attention!
But he can see how nobody would notice if Santini passed that way…
He is sure now that he has all the elements, everything except a motive, but this is easily found, and with the help of Wilson! The sergeant always knows all the latest technology :lol:
They try to work out what was Jerome doing at his desk, since they know he was sitting on his leather chair. The typewriter has no sheet in it, but Wilson explains what type of modern typewriter that is: its tape only works once, and every word remains clearly visible on it - totally true, I used those tapes when I was a little girl who loved typewriters (although not this kind, what a waste…). Of course I’m talking about many years later, I wasn’t even born when they shot this episode!!!
Anyway, now Colombo knows everything about it, and can confront Santini with the letter that Jerome wrote that night. Santini burns one, but they have many others.
Santini is busted and he knows it, and they all know it, including Wilson and the cops there.
He’s rather disappointed, he really thought he had done a perfect murder, and he says so to Colombo, who replies that there is no such thing as a perfect murder (well, not where there is a Colombo around, at least), and that that’s just an illusion… :lol: great pun, Colombo.
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