Re: Murder With Too Many Notes (MWTMN) original ending.
When I first saw this episode and Columbo gave his explanation on the roof at the end, I thought that I had missed something. But on rewatching it, the "gotcha" clue made even less sense. Perhaps the B-E-C-C-A sequence of notes being in the score showed that Findlay Crawford wasn't actually the composer because Becca wasn't his girlfriend, she was Gabes. This thereby proved that.....I guess Gabe actually wrote the music and therefore...err couldn't have killed himself because...umm Findlay didn't write...ugh forget it. It still makes no sense.
My guess is that they had a logical story that was changed in production due to a deadline and the producers decided to air it the way it was and hoped nobody would notice. I’ve probably said this before, but I picture Kay Freestone tearing up pages and crossing out lines and saying: “Don’t worry boys, they’ll never know what they missed”. Except we definitely did.