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The case

The killer

Laurence Harvey as Emmett Clayton

The victim

Jack Kruschen as Tomlin Dudek

Guest cast

Laurence Harvey, Lloyd Bochner, Michael Fox, Heidi Brühl, Jack Kruschen, Paul Jenkins

Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.

4:45

The murder

Emmett Clayton is the reigning champion and is losing his mind in the specific way that champions do: not to madness but to arithmetic. He knows he will lose the coming match against Tomlin Dudek, and he knows what losing means for a man who is nothing except the title.

The confrontation with Dudek happens after a private practice game that Clayton loses badly. He attacks him in a restaurant service area and pushes him into a garbage chute, assuming the fall and the compactor will finish it.

Dudek does not die. He survives in a coma, which turns Clayton's clean disposal into an open-ended problem — and gives the episode its uncomfortable second half, in which the killer has to plan a second attempt on a man lying in a hospital bed.

The match is days away and Clayton already knows the result. He has played Dudek in private, lost, and understood that the public loss will follow — and that a chess champion who is no longer champion is a man with no other qualities at all.

The attack in the restaurant service area is not planned. It is a man who has been calculating for weeks reaching the end of the calculation and finding only one move left.

Dudek surviving is the film's structural oddity. Clayton has to plan a second attempt on a man in a hospital bed, which means the murder is still in progress for most of the running time and the killer is improvising rather than defending.

How Columbo gets him

Clayton's mind is the film's subject. He talks to Columbo the way he plays: several moves ahead, every answer prepared, every gesture calculated. And that is precisely what marks him, because ordinary people do not have prepared answers about a colleague's accident.

The lieutenant's approach is to be visibly slower than the champion, which Clayton finds almost unbearable. Their scenes are a duel between someone who thinks in sequences and someone who circles the same three questions until the sequence breaks.

The turn comes with the hearing aid. Clayton is deaf in one ear and wears a device; a detail about what he could and could not have heard at a particular moment places him where he says he was not.

Clayton talks to Columbo the way he plays: several moves ahead, everything prepared. Ordinary people do not have prepared answers about a colleague's accident, and the preparation is what marks him.

The lieutenant deliberately plays slower than he is, which the champion finds nearly unbearable. Their scenes are a duel between a man who thinks in sequences and a man who circles the same three questions until a sequence breaks.

The hearing aid resolves it. Clayton is deaf in one ear, and what he could or could not have heard at a particular moment puts him where he says he was not.

6:21

Worth knowing

• Laurence Harvey was seriously ill during filming and died the following year; the fragility in the performance is not acting.
• The chess consultants ensured the games on screen are real positions, and one of them is a genuine famous match.
• Jack Kruschen plays Dudek with enough warmth in fifteen minutes that his fate actually lands.
• Laurence Harvey was gravely ill during production and died the following year; the physical fragility in the performance is real.
• The chess positions on screen were set by consultants and one is drawn from a genuine championship game.
• Jack Kruschen plays Dudek with enough warmth in fifteen minutes that the attack actually registers as loss.

Verdict

A strong, cold episode with an unusual structure: the victim survives, so the crime remains unfinished for most of the running time and Columbo is racing a second attempt rather than reconstructing a first.

Harvey's Clayton is one of the more pitiable murderers — a man whose whole identity is a ranking, watching it slip.

A cold, well-built episode with an unusual shape: the crime is unfinished, so Columbo is racing rather than reconstructing.

Clayton is also among the more pitiable murderers — a man whose entire identity is a ranking, watching it slip while he still has the trophy.

Familiar faces

Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.

• John Finnegan as Workman #112 episodesalso in Blueprint for Murder, Lovely But Lethal, A Friend in Deed, Last Salute to the Commodore, Fade in to Murder and 6 more
• Manuel DePina as Reporter #23 episodesalso in Double Exposure, An Exercise in Fatality
• Ray Ballard as Mr. Williams3 episodesalso in Suitable for Framing, Mind Over Mayhem
• Michael Fox as Dr. Benson2 episodesalso in Etude in Black
• Stuart Nisbet as Dr. Sullivan2 episodesalso in Short Fuse

Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →