Can she identify Jennifer’s lover? You bet she can! Only the joke’s on Columbo this time, as Audrey IDs drunkard Paul instead of Benedict. Sensing triumph, Columbo whips her along to an orchestral session. She says she can identify Jennifer’s love interest, who is someone from the orchestra. He even seeks assistance from an unlikely source: young Audrey, Jennifer’s precocious next door neighbour (for ‘precocious’ read ‘annoying’). The Lieutenant fastens himself to his suspect, seeking his (oft ludicrous) opinion on all matters of the case, and is there every time Benedict turns around, unsettling him at the car yard, at his home and in his place of work. Remaining inconspicuous doesn’t appear to be amongst Benedict’s strong pointsĪs Columbo’s investigations continue, we fall into the same delightful pattern the show so enamoured us with in Season 1. The proverbial plot is well and truly thickening. The scene is enlivened further as drunk trumpeter Paul – a former lover of Jennifer’s – stumbles onto the scene, braying about how there’s no way Jennifer would take her own life. If Columbo knows otherwise he doesn’t say so, although it’s not the sort of detail that normally escapes him. Benedict claims it fell off as he removed his coat there and then. The emergence of Alex Benedict at the house also provides some food for thought for Columbo as he witnesses the Maestro picking up a flower from the floor near the piano and attaching it to his lapel. Why would someone so talented and beautiful want to take her own life? And if she loved her pet cockatoo so much, why would she allow it to die of gas poisoning too? “All he does is sleep and drool”: ‘Dog’ made his debut in Etude in BlackĪlthough all signs point to a suicide, little things immediately bother Columbo. He’s at the vet’s getting a shot for his new dog – a slovenly basset hound he rescued from the pound – when he receives a summons to get to Jennifer’s house where she’s been found dead. It’s now that Lieutenant Columbo is called into action. His own ability to trip her phone number off the tip of his tongue alerts his wife’s suspicions, though, who struggles to maintain her belief in her man for the rest of the episode. Flying into a temper, Benedict orders an immediate change to the concert program while raging at Jennifer’s lack of reliability. Who? None other than Jennifer Welles, of course. Hours pass… Safely back at the Bowl, Benedict is informed that one of his musicians hasn’t showed up for the concert. He hasn’t noticed, and it’s the only thing that can tie him to the scene (if you exclude the disguise, the car mileage, the workshop break-in etc, etc). While lifting Jennifer’s stricken frame from the piano, Benedict’s boutonnier – a tell-tale pink carnation – has fallen to the floor. He then returns his car to the garage, seemingly not considering the odometer will show the mileage increase. He’s got 99 problems, but Jennifer Welles ain’t one of them anymore…īenedict plants the faux suicide note in Jennifer’s typewriter, lifts her limp frame into the kitchen and turns on the oven gas to make it look like she took her own life. Did I mention already that all this is done in broad daylight? Benedict has balls, I’ll give him that…Įntering the house, Benedict pashes with Jennifer, who gives him an ultimatum: tell your wife about us, or I will! He assures her he’ll break the bad news to Janice ASAP, and tasks Jennifer with playing a heart-warming ditty on the piano. As she obliges, Benedict wraps a heavy ashtray in a cloth and clocks her around the back of the swede with it. He enters via a window of the rankest-looking toilet in TV history and confidently leaps into his extremely eye-catching and memorable Jaguar, which he drives to Jennifer’s house and parks literally around the corner. “Musical maestro Alex Benedict has been romping with thigh-revealing pianist Jennifer Welles.” He’s already faked a suicide note from Jennifer, so donning an amazingly conspicuous and memorable disguise of a long beige trench coat and HUGE sunglasses, Benedict sets out from the Bowl and jogs – in broad daylight no less – back to the car workshop. Before the killing, however, Benedict has got some work to do. And when we says ‘nap’, what we really mean is ice-cold, premeditated MURDER. Leaving his Jag at a grimy mechanic’s shop, Benedict gets a lift to the Hollywood Bowl with wife Janice to begin his prep for the evening’s symphony.Īfter bossing a few underlings around, Benedict retires to his dressing room for a nap. Jennifer – clearly not a good judge of characters – is wrong. Benedict hatches a dastardly plot to rid himself of the ivory tinkling trouble-maker. Cover those thighs, strumpet! This is a family show…
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