I liked it, it was nice, very easy and predictable, sure, to guess from start to finish, but also enjoyable to watch.
This time the murderer was one of those arrogant ‘I’m so intelligent’ type that think he did it all perfectly and thought of everything and, of course, that Colombo is stupid simply because he’s spontaneous, simple in the best way, not fake like most other people who watch how they act in front of others. This is also why he doesn’t wear fancy stuff, because he likes to be comfortable and at ease, and feels no need to impress people with fashion trends or silly things like that.
This episode starts showing us Clifford Calvert exchanging words with Howard Seltzer because Howard is sueing him. Clifford punches him in front of many people. Later that night we see Clifford telling his wife Cathleen that if he loses or if the tax people get their hands on him, he may lose everything and she’d be poor again. This is when it’s clear that she’ll kill one of these two men. Later we see her with her secreet lover Paatrick Kinsley. She brings out the topic of having Clifford disappear so they could spend all his money, but she’d be the first suspect of course, so she has an alternative: kill Howard and blame it on Clifford. Patrick agrees and they act their plan. They take Clifford’s gun and one of his cuban cigars. Cathleen waits for Clifford at one of her friend’s wedding. Patrick goes to Howard’s house - who believes his story that he needs to phone because his daughter had an accident, or something. Howard lets him in and answers all his questions: never been married or had children, no maids around the house… so once he’s sure nobody will appear, Patrick shoots him, then plants his ‘evidence’: he uses his own Swiss army kniffe to cut the bottom of the cigar and leave it in the ashtray than he uses a cordless avcuum cleaner to collect some of the cat’s fur and carpet fibers that he’ll leave for Cathleen to take and spread over Clifford’s jacket while dancing at the party.
Patrick throws away the gun because he says it’d look too obvious and no cop would fall for it. He works in the police now, in the scientific department, and meets Colombo right away.
Patrick doesn’t find the piece of cigar and this worries him so much he goes back to search for it. Colombo orders a cop to look everwhere for Howard’s cat and he finally finds it, the same day Patrick was there. The cat brings them to the cigar, because of course it was the cat who moved it, there was nobody else. Now Patrick tells Colombo he’s come for this because he had seen it the night of the murder but was not among the evidence, and nobody will ever remark on this but it’s obvious he could not, because the cat moved it then escaped when the cop opened the door and found the body, and is found only now. No way he could have seen it that night.
Patrick joins “too much” the investigation, asking about suspects and stuff, he really does appeara to want Clifford arrested, and yet maybe at this point Colombo wonders if it’s just because he started this job only recently - I think he was a professor collaborating with the police before, now he’s part of it.
Colombo finds details, as he usually do: Clifford uses a special cutter for his cigars, making a totally different cut - and his wife never saw this? Wow, she never paid him any attention, did she?
Also, Clifford stopped at a supermarket for cough pills like ten minutes after the murder, which was in the opposite direction of when he was going - I mean, the wedding is in the opposite direction if you consider it from the victim’s house.
That of course makes no sense, so Colombo starts suspecting the wife who, of course, had easy access to the gun and a good motive indeed. Patrick is still sure Clifford will be arrested when he presents the test results of the cat hair on his jacket, but Colombo doesn’t give up and makes various enlargements of two wedding pictures, one of Clifford’s back right after the ceremony and one while he was dancing with Cathleen. One shows a clean jacket, the other doesn’t.
This would free Clifford but not necessarily accuse the real guilty ones, but Colombo saw what I saw when he put them together at his favourite place. At a table with their coffees, Patrick took the sugar cubes and pushed the sweetener towards her because he knew how she likes her coffee! Colombo noticed this and it was a shock, but now things started making a lot more sense. Colomb watches them to be sure, and indeed when she gets in teh car, Patrick opens the front door of the car showing that he knew she prefers the front seat. Neither Patrick or Cathleen noticed it, but Colombo did.
So, at the end Colombo shows them both, separately the pictures and he also takes Patrick’s swiss army knife to check for cigar traces. He makes them believe that the other wants to betray him/her, so they talk to the DA and start accusing each other.
The end…
But Colombo must explain it to the audience, even though it was pretty clear, and it’s a long scene when they also use a wrong scene (the hand moves the milk but Patrick didn’t, he moved the sugar). I think it was unnecessary, at least they could have made it shorter, no need for the reenactment.
The funny ending: Colombo cuts the cuban cigar Clifford gave him - he sort of made Clifford give him one - with the cutter Clifford gave him, but he does not like it and bites the tip off like he always did, and likes it much more :-)
Cathleen was played by Shera Danese, Peter Falk’s wife
ITA sulle tracce dell’assassino
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