Death Lends a Hand story
Carl Brimmer, the very tough, hard-nosed head of a private detective agency, with unfortunate and fateful anger issues, is hired by Arthur Kennicut, a powerful publishing magnate who suspects his wife, Lenore, of infidelity. Although Brimmer indeed finds evidence of her being unfaithful, instead of reporting this fact to his client, he attempts to blackmail Lenore into obtaining business and political secrets from her husband. She refuses and tells him she will expose his plot to her husband, at which point Brimmer accidentally kills her in a fit of rage. He dumps her body at a scrapyard and later joins the investigation into Lenore's death with Columbo. Brimmer secretly starts to divert suspicion away from himself and even offers Columbo a job. Final clue/twist: Columbo becomes suspicious when he realizes a cut on the victim's face matches Brimmer's ring. He disables Brimmer's car, causing the vehicle to be garaged for repair. He has Lenore's body exhumed, then claims that one of her contact lenses was not with the body and is missing. He tells Brimmer the lens must be either at the crime scene or in the car the murderer used to transport the body. After searching for it in his home, Brimmer goes to the garage after-hours and searches for it in the trunk of his car. He finds a contact lens, but is caught by Columbo, with Kennicut in tow. When Brimmer tries to throw the lens away the police stop him, and he confesses. After Brimmer is led away Columbo admits to Kennicut he had arranged everything, and that there never was a missing contact lens. Notes: This episode won an Emmy for writing and is known for the "glasses effect" after Brimmer kills Lenore, in which both lenses of Brimmer's glasses simultaneously show different images on-screen of him cleaning the scene of the crime. Brimmer is the first of a small number of Columbo killers who appear sympathetic after Columbo catches them as Brimmer apologetically tells Kennicut that the killing was an accident and that he didn't want to hurt either one of them. Directed by: Bernard Kowalski. Story by: Richard Levinson, William Link.
16 total · 2 choice · 7 major · 7 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| murder | choice | The plot turns on Columbo proving the hard-nosed head of a private detective agency Carl Brimmer murdered the wife of a publishing magnate and dumped her body in a scrapyard. |
| what if I killed someone by accident | choice | The hard-nosed head of a private detective agency Carl Brimmer killed the wife of a publishing magnate in a fit of rage and made it look as if she'd been killed in a scuffle with muggers. He would have gotten away with his crime had it not been for Columbo. |
| anger management issues | major | The villain Carl Brimmer's bad temper proved to be his undoing. He killed the wife of a publishing magnate in a fit of rage. Later, Columbo used the fact that Carl had anger issues to gain an advantage over him. |
| appearances can be deceiving | major | Witnesses and villains alike are caught off guard by Lieutenant Columbo's bumbling façade, which invariably proves to conceal a laser-focused mind. |
| blackmail | major | Carl tried to blackmail Lenore into supplying him with business and political secrets in exchange for keeping quiet about her romantic infidelity. |
| extramarital affair | major | Lenore having been unfaithful to her husband was a key plot element. |
| honesty | major | It was a notable, and fatal, virtue of the victim's that made her resist Carl's blackmailing of her. Her high mindedness and her faithfulness to her husband (her infidelity notwithstanding) were pointed out in conversation. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo was tasked with solving the following murder mystery: The battering to death of the glamorous wife of a publishing magnate. |
| private investigator occupation | major | The villain of the story, Carl Brimmer, was the head of a high-profile private detective agency. The viewer is provided an inside look into the operations of the agency. |
| choosing between job opportunities | minor | After some faux consideration, Columbo declined a lucrative offer to join a high-profile detective agency, citing something to the effect that he wished to follow through on the Lenore Kennicut murder investigation. |