Grand Deceptions story
Colonel Frank Brailie is running a paramilitary mercenary school owned by General Jack Padget. Brailie is also having an affair with Padget's wife Jenny. Brailie is siphoning money from Padget's foundation into what he calls "The Special Projects Fund", which is secretly used to finance illegal dealings. The suspicious General asks an employee, Sgt. Major Lester Keegan to look into the matter. Keegan finds the evidence but decides to blackmail Brailie instead of reporting his findings. During a training exercise, occurring on the night of the General's birthday party, Brailie sneaks into the mercenary camp, wearing a ski mask, and stabs Keegan, then puts the body on an explosive that is detonated. He sneaks back to the General's estate and makes it look like he was assembling a diorama of the Battle of Gettysburg at the time. Final clue/twist: Columbo realized that a shipping box labeled as having contained books (which Brailie received earlier on the day of the murder) was too small to contain the number of books it was supposed to contain, and thus the box must have instead contained the toy soldiers for the diorama, and the books must have arrived in a shipment that arrived later (which Brailie claimed contained the toy soldiers). This meant that Brailie had swapped the labels on the boxes and had had enough time to set up the diorama over the course of the day, and therefore had no alibi for the time of the murder. Directed by: Sam Wanamaker. Story by: Sy Salkowitz.
17 total · 2 choice · 8 major · 7 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| blackmail | choice | Colonel Frank Brailie killed his prospective blackmailer, Sgt. Major Lester Keegan, to keep Keegan from outing him for embezzling money and sleeping with the general's wife. Frank tried to blackmail General Padget in turn, but Padget had too much integrity to fall for Frank's trap. |
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | Colonel Frank Brailie hatched the following plot to eliminate his prospective colleague and blackmailer, Sgt. Major Lester Keegan: He snuck out from a nighttime social gathering, crept over to the training grounds where Keegan was overseeing a training exercise, stabbed Keegan in the heart, and then made it look like Keegan died from being in the close proximity of an explosive device when it was detonated. Brailie then returned to the said gathering without anyone being the wiser, thus securing for himself a seemingly air-tight alibi. One gathers that he would have gotten away with his crime had it not been for the meddlesome Lt. Columbo. |
| attitude of superiority | major | Lt. Columbo pointed out that Colonel Frank was too arrogant to be caught cleaning up mud from the floor: the slip-up that had put the lieutenant on the colonel's scent. |
| embezzlement | major | Colonel Frank Brailie was funneling training school money through a "Special Projects Fund". |
| extramarital affair | major | General Padget's wife, Jenny, was carrying on a steamy love affair with Padget's subordinate, Frank. |
| greed for riches | major | Colonel Frank Brailie was funneling training school money through a "Special Projects Fund". |
| husband and wife | major | Jenny had a paramour because her husband, General Padget, was too aged to fulfill his marital duties. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with solving the following alleged murder mystery: Did the experienced soldier Sgt. Major Lester Keegan perish in an explosion during a routine training exercise, or was something more foul afoot? |
| love triangle | major | General Padget's wife, Jenny, was carrying on a steamy love affair with Padget's subordinate, Frank. |
| military related work | major | The story revolves around the goings on at a paramilitary mercenary school. |