Murder with Too Many Notes story
Hollywood film composer and conductor Findlay Crawford has been mentor to a talented young composer, Gabriel McEnery, who has been ghostwriting most of Crawford's work for the last few years. Gabe even penned Crawford's last movie score, which won an Oscar. Crawford realizes he will be ruined and ridiculed if it ever becomes known. Aware that Gabe practices on the roof of a studio building, Crawford plots his murder. He promises Gabe will get to conduct the orchestra during a concert based on Crawford's "own" movie scores. While giving a toast, Crawford drugs Gabe, then takes his body up to his rooftop rehearsal place, which happens to be atop a trapdoor to a freight elevator. He makes it look like Gabe was there rehearsing; With the concert about to begin, Crawford starts the freight elevator, then makes it into the concert hall in time to begin conducting before the elevator reaches the top. When the elevator doors open, Gabe's unconscious body is pushed over the side and falls to his death, landing in front of a late-arriving couple. Final clue/twist: Columbo's first clue is that the victim did not cry out as he fell to his death: On the victim’s body, Columbo finds a cut on his hand in which dried blood reveals the presence of secobarbital, explaining why the victim did not scream as he fell to his death; he was unconscious. This explains why his shoes were two sizes too large and why his house key was missing: the victim couldn’t complain because he was unconscious. In Columbo's reconstruction of the Crime clues point to Crawford as the killer. Crawford confirmed just before that McEnery would have heard the elevator that threw him off the roof if he wasn’t unconscious. Directed by: Patrick McGoohan. Story by: Patrick McGoohan, Jeffrey Cava.
14 total · 2 choice · 7 major · 5 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | Findlay Crawford came up with the following scheme to rid himself of his young protégé, Gabriel McEnery, who threatened to reveal Findlay as a fraud: Findlay drugged Gabriel and placed his limp body on an outwards-opening trap door on top of a four-story building, and timed an elevator in such a way that the doors would open and push Gabriel over the edge while Findlay was on live TV. One gathers that he would have gotten away with it had the pesky Lt. Columbo not been assigned to the case. |
| the desire for fame | choice | Findlay Crawford liked basking in the fame he had acquired by exploiting his young protégé, Gabriel McEnery, so much that he murdered Gabriel in order to keep the arrangement a secret. |
| benefiting from someone else's work | major | Findlay Crawford, an Academy Award winning film score composer, murdered his ghost-composer out of desperation to keep the young man from outing him as a fraud. |
| coping with being washed up | major | The aging film score composer Findlay Crawford was past his prime. Instead of riding off into the sunset, he took a talented young composer under his wing to serve as his ghostwriter. |
| filmmaking | major | Findlay was a famous composer of film scores, and notably of music accompanying movie murders, who had exploited and plagiarized his young protégé Gabriel McEnery. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with the following murder mystery: Did Gabriel McEnery, a talented young composer, simply fall off a four-story building or was foul play (perhaps orchestrated and conducted by an embarrassed orchestra conductor) afoot? |
| mentor and protégé | major | Findlay Crawford liked basking in the fame he had acquired by exploiting his young protégé, Gabriel McEnery, so much that he murdered Gabriel in order to keep the arrangement a secret. |
| music | major | Findlay Crawford was a famous composer of film scores, and notably of music accompanying movie murders, who had exploited and plagiarized his young protégé Gabriel McEnery. |
| the entertainment industry | major | We saw the composing of film scores in a studio. The producer was present from time to time, as was various other key functionaries. |
| boyfriend and girlfriend | minor | Lt. Columbo barged in on late Gabriel's mourning girlfriend as she lay grieving in his bed. Gabriel kept a photo of Rebecca in his wallet, Sgt. Degarmo uncovered. |