Columbo · Season 1
I don't understand.
Well, that's painfully obvious. One of these men had Jim killed.
Really? Why?
Tell me something-- how long have you been a lieutenant, Lieutenant? Mrs. Melville would have put that together like that. [snaps his fingers]
Look, I, I wanna take all the help I can get.
I'll tell you something, Lieutenant. See, if Mrs. Melville were on this case, oh, she'd be leaps and bounds ahead of you by now.
Is that the lady in the books?
[after Columbo exposes him as the murderer] You want to know the irony of all this? That is my idea. The only really good one I ever had. I must've told it to Jim over five years ago. Who ever thought that idiot would write it down?
What would you have done if the car hadn't broken down? You couldn't set up this trap.
Well, I guess we would have found some other way. You know what this place reminds me of, just seeing all these cars? You know, in our neighborhood we had a bunch of jokers. I mean we were a real loud bunch of guys and we figured out a perfect way to put a car out of commission. You take a potato, you stick it in the exhaust pipe. Doesn't cause any damage but the car won't start. It was a terrible thing to do. And I got a feeling that the reason I became a cop was to make up for all those jokes I played when I was a kid.
I was just wondering because your beach house and his beach house, they're fairly close, aren't they?
No. It's a couple of miles.
That close! Isn't that a coincidence! I'll tell ya, this case is just full of 'em.
Isn't that weird? What a coincidence!
What's that?
Here a moment ago we were talking about lefthanded people and you're lefthanded.
[During a lesson with the golf pro he's investigating] Listen, can I help you out? Don't say anything else. You don't have an attorney. Wait until you get an attorney. This way you can hurt your case. Believe me, I know something about my business. I don't know nothing about golf, you know. See, that's your business. I know something about my business. And believe me, you know, down through the years, uh, you get so that you, uh, you develop a nose for things, you see, and, uh [makes a perfect swing] after a while the ol' nose just tells you when someone is not giving you the truth. Now, uh, I'm gonna forget about the lesson because I could never learn this game but I'll be back to talk to ya.
Well, if it was me, if it was my gun, I would take very good care of that gun. I'd have it in my apartment where people could see it. And I would keep it polished and I would keep it oiled. And I would keep it loaded. And when a certain Colonel Dutton came to see me and threatened to expose me, that's the gun that I would use.
[At the exhibition of the General's war memorabilia] Hey, that's nice, isn't it? Isn't that beautifully cut? Custom tailored. You know, I think it's almost too nice. I mean all that concern about clothes. It's kinda vain, don't you think?
Some men, Lieutenant, do not want to look like an unmade bed.
[aboard the General's boat] I don't see how a man with the name of Columbo, shouldn't he be more at home on a boat?
Must have been another branch of the family, sir. How soon before we land?
Look! What do you see?
Your house.
And in the window?
I can't see anything because of the reflection of the sun on the water.
You know, you said you saw a shooting there about this same time of day.
You know what strikes me? You're the one that downgrades yourself. One dinner with General Hollister and you begin to doubt your senses.
You notice, no matter how abstract the painter, he always signs his name realistically, doesn't he.
Wait a minute. You mean, you think the thief was a woman?
One of them.
ONE of them?
Well, there were too many pictures there for one person to carry, don't ya think? And besides, the burglar alarm thing, you know, there's only one way to really beat that, is if you have somebody else from the inside open the door.
I don't think I understand.
You know what? That's the trouble. Neither do I.
You know that gallery you went to? Checked out. I hope you don't mind.
Oh, that's your job. And?
Uh, the parking lot boy, he remembered when you got there, alright. So that if Mr. Mathews was killed at 11:00 you sure didn't do it.
Now, isn't that a shame? And here I am your best and most obvious suspect, too.
Ah, don't say things like that. Really, you got me all wrong.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Columbo pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
