Raincoat & Riddles

growing up with the scruffy detective

As a seven-year-old boy the highlight of Sunday evening was a new episode of Columbo.

Every case began with the Perfect Murder, presented to us in detail on-screen. The killer would carefully prepare the phony ransom note, arrange a fake phone call, or secretly edit the CCTV footage.

Who would ever guess that they had driven to the victim’s house in a borrowed ice-cream vendor truck?

They were Important People who always had the Perfect Alibi (with many witnesses).

Murder was their entitlement. The killer was always oh-so-clever, and confident of their victory.

And then Lieutenant Columbo would shamble onto the scene. He had a stinky cigar, a sad basset hound called “Dog,” and a rumpled raincoat.

Columbo would have to apologize to the suspect for walking on their nice carpet with his muddy shoes. They were Very Important People, and he was sorry to interrupt – he just had to politely ask them a few Inconvenient Questions.

What happened to the pink carnation that was in the lapel of the conductor’s tuxedo earlier in the evening?

The Very Important Person would smile, and give polished answers to Columbo. They were successful Big Shots and he was just a funny little man asking irrelevant questions.

What were those strange scratches notched into the whiskey bottle found near the victim’s body?

Like Columbo, I knew that adults were lying to me, even though I had no proof yet.

In school the nuns said we had to obey the Ten Commandments, and so I asked about the Seventh: Thou shalt not commit adultery. What was that? Sister Muriel waved me away and told me not to be concerned, that it was a sin only adults could commit. But Lt. Columbo would not have accepted an evasive answer.

Why didn’t the voice message on the answering machine also record the noon chimes of the grandfather clock?

Mrs. Carroll was the gray-haired widow who lived in one of the downstairs apartments. She sat on the park bench most days, in her gravy-stained dress, and asked everyone passing by “Have you seen Tommy?” My friend Shawn’s mother said we should avoid Mrs. Carroll because she was “senile,” and it might be contagious. But I think Columbo would want to know Mrs. Carroll’s story and help her find Tommy.

The victim was a Texas oil baron who only listened to country music – so why was his car radio tuned to the classical-music station?

When reading the story of Hansel & Gretel, it wasn’t the witch that scared me – my nagging question was: why had the children been abandoned in a dark forest in the first place?

Unlike other police, Columbo didn’t carry a gun, just a small notebook and a pencil. Like me, his only tool in this strange world of Big Important People was observation.

At last, the critical scene would come when Columbo would confront the suspect. He’d ask “How do you explain this?” and from his pocket pull the cracked wristwatch, or the stolen key, or the forgotten postage stamp on the envelope.

Faced with the pesky evidence, the murderer would bow their head, smile sadly in defeat, and confess… adding that they should not have underestimated the rumpled detective.

I could sleep well that Sunday night, safe and comforted, knowing that if you keep asking Inconvenient Questions, the world could be put right.

Unless that one question kept me awake: who had abandoned Hansel & Gretel in the deep woods?

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