By Dawn's Early Light story

columbo1971e4x03 · 1974-10-27

Colonel Lyle C. Rumford, head of the Haynes Military Academy, an all-boys school, is told by the Board of Trustees president William Haynes, with whom Rumford has a contentious relationship, that due to declining enrollment it must be converted into a coed school. Haynes also makes clear that Rumford will no longer be in charge of the revamped institution. Rumford rigs a school cannon by blocking its discharge with a cleaning rag, then modifies a shell with a more powerful explosive so that the cannon will explode when Haynes fires it the next morning, at a ceremonial occasion. Rumford pins the accident on a cadet, Roy Springer, who has a history of behavioral demerits. Eventually Rumford’s own fanatical sense of duty provides Columbo the clues that lead to Rumford’s incrimination. Final clue/twist: Rumford, an absolute stickler for the academy’s rules, is determined to find a bottle of prohibited cider that he knows is on the premises. Columbo himself finds the cider, and realizes there is a connection between it and the murder. He gains the confidence of the cadets who made the cider, and has them tell him everything about how and when it was made. Once he learns that information, he asks Rumford if he had seen the cider previously. When Rumford says yes, it incriminates him. Columbo tells him he could have seen the cider only on the morning of the murder (the cider had been hung out to ferment at night, and as such was only visible around sunrise), and only if he was standing very near the cannon (because of the location of the trees on the academy grounds). So on the morning of the murder Rumford was not asleep, as he had claimed; instead, he must have been at the cannon. Directed by: Harvey Hart. Story by: Howard Berk.