Recap / Columbo S 02 E 04

Somehow he didn't solve the Jack the Ripper case

Episode: Season 2, Episode 4
Title:"Dagger of the Mind"
Directed by: Richard Quine
Written by: Jackson Gillis (teleplay), Richard Levinson and William Link (story)
Air Date: November 26, 1972
Previous: The Most Crucial Game
Next: Requiem for a Falling Star
Guest Starring: Richard Basehart, Honor Blackman, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Bernard Fox

"Dagger of the Mind" is the fourth episode of the second season of Columbo.

Husband-and-wife Nicholas Frame and Lillian Stanhope (Richard Basehart and Honor Blackman) are veteran stage actors who may be a bit past their prime. They are staging a new production of Macbeth, however, thanks to the generosity of super-rich producer Sir Roger Haversham (John Williams). Sir Roger is bankrolling the show because he's under the impression that Lillian is romantically interested in him. Unfortunately for Nicholas and Lillian, Sir Roger has figured out that they have been stringing him along. Angrily, he comes to the theater to confront them, and makes clear he's going to shut down the production completely, and blacklist both Nicholas and Lillian. A fight breaks out in the dressing room, Lillian wings a jar of cold cream at Sir Roger, he falls to the floor...and he's dead.

After a moment to consider how much trouble they're going to be in, Nicholas and Lillian put Sir Roger into a trunk, and take him back to his mansion. They stage a scene in which he looks like he's fallen down the stairs. The police might have bought it if not for their American visitor, Lt. Columbo, who is visiting London to study British police techniques as the guest of Scotland Yard Detective Chief Superintendent William Durk (Bernard Fox). Columbo immediately notices odd details, like how Sir Roger apparently put an exceedingly valuable book on a table open and face down, or how the reading glasses in his pocket weren't broken during the fall.

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Tropes:

• And Starring: Honor Blackman with the "Special Guest Star" credit.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Nicholas and Lillian are not...great at acting.
• The Bard on Board: Appropriately enough for two actors playing the lead roles in a certain play about a certain Scottish king, Nicholas and Lillian are basically re-enacting whole swaths of Macbeth. Their Unholy Matrimony ends up killing an authority figure they answer to, they try to conceal their murder for greater glory they feel they’ve been promised, and paranoia about their crime sees them slip into Murder Is the Best Solution towards a savvy accomplice by inaction, before one of them goes utterly mad by the end. They even get “haunted” by their victim when a wax museum recreates him. The biggest difference is that the two switch off who’s playing the Lady Macbeth.
• Benevolent Boss: Sir Roger was known to be pretty considerate towards his staff.
• Blackmail Backfire: Tanner the butler figures out what happened when Richard and Lillian get a little too insistent about Sir Roger's umbrella. Since he's looking for a job, he demands that they hire him or he'll go to the authorities. They kill him instead.
• Bland-Name Product: The climax takes place at a generic "London Wax Museum" because apparently they didn't want to pay Madame Tussaud's.
• Bluffing the Murderer: Columbo gets Nicholas and Lillian to confess by revealing one of her costume pearls to be still in Sir Roger's umbrella. After an astonished Superintendent Durk (Bernard Fox) wonders how he knew it would be in there, Columbo reveals that he threw it in.
• Busman's Holiday: The first episode in which Columbo had to solve a case in an exotic locale. In this one he's in London as basically an observer to learn the techniques of Scotland Yard.
• The Butler Did It: Invoked by Nicholas when he frames Tanner as Sir Roger's murderer. A tabloid in the episode even reads "THE BUTLER DID IT" when reporting on the discovery of Tanner's body.
• Conversation Cut: An entire scene in which Columbo tells Lillian and Richard about his suspicions about the car getting rained on is done this way, cutting back and forth between him telling Lillian in her dressing room and her telling Nicholas in his.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Part of the reason why Nicholas kills Tanner, besides getting rid of a blackmailer—he sets up Tanner so it seems like he was the one responsible for killing Sir Roger and stealing rare books from the library (the alleged motive for the crime).
• Death by Falling Over: You wouldn't think having a porcelain bowl thrown at you from across a dressing room would be fatal.
• Double Meaning: Right after the play, Nicholas and Lillian give Columbo a carefully rehearsed account of the night of the murder. Columbo later talks about what a great performance they gave, leaving it ambiguous which "performance" he's talking about.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: So we know this is London, the first shot is an aerial of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
• Fake Brit: Richard Basehart as Nicholas Frame, sporting a very fake British accent.
• Glad You Thought of It: Durk is initially very skeptical of Columbo's theory that the accident was staged, until Columbo points out that, if Sir Roger had fallen down the stairs, the glasses in his pocket would be smashed. In the next scene, Columbo praises Durk for "the idea you had" about checking Sir Roger's pockets. Durk's reaction suggests that he knows what Columbo is doing, but is willing to play along.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Only accidentally. Sir Roger offhandedly mentions to Lillian that he came in through a back entrance. After the murder, Lillian realizes that since no one saw Sir Roger arrive, they can cover up the deed by placing the body elsewhere.
• The Help Helping Themselves: Invoked by Nicholas and Lilian when they kill and frame Tanner. They fill his home with rare books from Sir Roger's estate, implying that he was stealing the books and killed his employer to avoid being found out. All the police fall for it, except for Columbo of course.
• Large Ham: Sir Roger calls Nicholas this during their confrontation, and judging on what we see of the Macbeth production, he's right.
• Laughing Mad: How Nicholas's Villainous Breakdown starts out at the end, Columbo having finally gotten them.
• Leave No Witnesses: When Tanner comes around to the Frames’ place alluding to him knowing they killed Sir Roger, the couple kills him and makes it look like he hanged himself.
• Literal Metaphor: Nicholas starts freaking out during the rehearsal. Lillian says "you're coming unglued." He is...but he's also literally coming unglued, as his fake beard is peeling off.
• Never Suicide: Of course we know from the start that Tanner didn't hang himself.
• The Prima Donna: Lillian is established as this when she rants about her costume crown and chucks it at the director.
• Ripping Off the String of Pearls: Sir Roger rips off Lily's pearl costume necklace when confronting her. The pearls spill all over the place, and Columbo uses this to capture the pair.
• Separated by a Common Language: Columbo is telling Richard about some spots on the "hood" of the car, which is odd, because it hadn't rained at Sir Roger's country estate. (It had in London.) Richard is puzzled for a second, and then he says "Oh, the bonnet."
  • Columbo can barely understand what the very British constable at the scene of the crime is saying, and asks Durk for a translation.
• Show Within a Show: The production of Macbeth. The episode winks at this, like having a stagehand bother Lillian and Richard as they're trying to get rid of a corpse in much the same way that a porter bothers Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
• Staircase Tumble: This is what Sir Roger's death is staged to look like.
• Vacation Episode: Well, it was a work trip, but still.
• Villainous Breakdown: Nicholas cracks up at the end, reciting the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy from Macbeth while Lillian pleads for mercy.
• Widow's Weeds: Lillian really hams it up, with the black dress and the veil at the funeral. This along with the crying seems to draw Lt. Columbo's suspicion.

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