PLOT: Laurence Harvey plays neurotic and highly-strung chess champion Emmet Clayton, who is due to face Tomlin Dudek in a world title encounter. He begins having nightmares about losing the forthcoming contest and when he plays Dudek in a friendly game in a restaurant he is even more worried. He decides to do away with Dudek. He pushes him into a lift shaft. However, Dudek does not die. Clayton is scared that he will come round and expose him so he tampers with Dudek's medication, causing him to die. Columbo soon begins hounding Clayton. He finds out that the two played a game of chess in the restaurant, though he can not establish for sure who won the game. Eventually he realises that the murderer had to be deaf. Clayton is deaf and wears a hearing aid. When he pushed Dudek down the shaft into the machinery it shut down (a failsafe). Only someone who was deaf would be oblivious to the sound of the machinery stopping. Columbo believes this is all the proof he needs and in a tense final scene he distracts Clayton while he is playing several games of chess simultaneously. Clayton goes with Columbo, who shows him the machinery. Then he turns it on and it makes a loud sound. Clayton takes his hearing aid out and shouts "turn it off" but is oblivious to the fact that Columbo has already turned it off.
VERDICT:
This is a rather dark episode. Laurence Harvey puts in a decent performance as Clayton. The episode seems a bit slow at times, particularly the run up to the murder, which is unusually and unnecessarily long. The deafness aspect is rather obviously highlighted throughout and it is no surprise that the sealing clue is linked with it. In actual fact Columbo's evidence is quite weak, though that doesn't usually bother him. Laurence Harvey died soon after this episode was released at the premature age of 45 and he seemed to be in pain during it.
Written by Mark Wilson
(C) Copyright Wilson/Young Enterprises 2006.
CAST:
Emmett Clayton.....Laurence Harvey
Tomlin Dudek.........Jack Kruschen
Mazoor Berozski......Lloyd Bochner
Linda Robinson.........Heidi Brühl
Dr Benson..............Michael Fox
Sergeant Douglas......Paul Jenkins
Dr Sullivan..........Stuart Nisbet
