PLOT: Composer Findlay Crawford has won awards for his film scores. However, for several years he has relied on his young assistant Gabriel McEnery to write all the music and taken the credit. McEnery finally has enough and threatens to expose Crawford. Then Crawford calms him down by saying he can conduct part of the concert the following evening. This seems to work as finally he is getting some recognition for his efforts. At every concert Crawford conducts in the concert hall while McEnery is on the roof (he has the music from the concert piped up to the roof). Crawford knows his eccentric habits. He offers McEnery a drink in his office which is drugged. As he is losing consciousness his champagne glass smashes and he falls on it, causing a slight cut on his wrist. Then Crawford uses an old elevator, which had been installed years before for a film and not used since, to go up to the roof. He leaves the body over the lift hatch and leaves the roof by the steps. Just before the concert starts Crawford presses the up buttton and then the down button on the elevator. Then he enters the concert hall and begins conducting. The elevator continues until it reaches the roof. Then the hatch opens and the body is pushed off the roof. It lands just in front of a couple who are on their way to the concert hall. It isn't long before the alarm is raised and the concert is abandoned. Columbo arrives on the scene. He speaks to the couple who the body landed in front of and the lady confirmed that the man did not scream or shout. The first thing they were aware that there was a falling body was when it landed. This immediately arouses Columbo's suspicions. Then he examines the roof area and can not find a baton. This is strange because the victim always conducted with a baton. Columbo starts to suspect Crawford of being the killer, particularly when he discovers the motive. He visits the area where the lift entrance is. It is in a disused part of the studio that is covered in dust, yet there is evidence that the dust has been disturbed in certain places. Columbo realises the cause of the sound interference at the start of the concert when he plays back the recording. It was the sound of the elevator. The clinching piece of evidence is the baton. He goes up to the roof with Crawford to show him what happened to it. When the lift shaft opened it fell into the lift. This could not have happened if the shaft had stayed shut. Also, it would have been impossible for the victim to have been conducting at the time and unaware of the lift coming up because it made a loud noise and if he had been standing up the force probably wouldn't have been sufficient to throw him off the roof. However, if he was drugged and lying over the shaft the body would have fallen off the roof. Columbo also has proof that the victim was drugged because in the cut on his wrist which was sustained when he fell when he lost consciousness contained traces of a sleeping substance. Columbo has all the proof he needs.
VERDICT: This is another below par effort. The motive for the murder is pretty implausible. After all, once Crawford had offered McEnery a chance to conduct the concert he was quite satisfied and wouldn't have exposed him. By killing him, Crawford was exposing his own ineptness. There is a scene near the end where the director of the film says that he isn't happy with Crawford's efforts. Of course he wouldn't be, because all the music Crawford was supposed to have written was written by his protege! The murder itself is rather bizarre. Conducting on the roof in the dark is not eccentric, it is bordering on madness. It is completely implausible that he would have been doing that just minutes before he was due to conduct the orchestra for the first time. Billy Connolly is a competent villain, but I've seen better.
