1. What is the crashing noise on the tape recording immediately after the shooting?

2. How does Greenleaf know the ending to the book when (we assume, from the dictation) Mallory has not yet finished writing it, and the ending has been discussed only by Mallory and his agent?

3. Why does Greenleaf bother to use the second key even when Kane has told him the door was open? (I know this has been asked before - the explanation that Columbo will keep the case open until he finds the key is hardly satisfactory, given that Columbo himself later works out that the door must have been open.)

4. When Columbo first meets Greenleaf, he surely has no reason to suspect him. For all he knew at that point, Greenleaf and Mallory were close friends. Yet he makes Greenleaf listen to the shooting on a tape recording! Hardly a sensitive way to break the news.

5. Is this episode unusually clumsily written?

1) Did it have something to do with the cross-ventilation causing the blinds to rattle/door to slam?

2) Wasn't he getting inside information from that kid who appeared at the end of the episode?

3) Greenleaf might not have known that Columbo figured out that the door was open. When discussing the discrepancy with Columbo, Greenleaf might feel suggesting that possibilty might be too revealing. Planting the second key may better help solidify the evidence against Eddie Kane in Greenleaf's mind.

4) You may have a good point here, but I haven't seen the episode for awhile.

5) I'm not a huge fan of this episode. I thought it was a little too gritty for my taste, and many aspects of it were predictable. Peter S. Fischer went on to write many other episodes that I consider masterpiece-quality.

1. What is the crashing noise on the tape recording immediately after the shooting?

Likely the blowback pressure rattling the window blinds just behind Mallory's head and the body being knocked off the chair and onto the floor. After all, he was shot at point blank range.

2. How does Greenleaf know the ending to the book when (we assume, from the dictation) Mallory has not yet finished writing it, and the ending has been discussed only by Mallory and his agent?

Actually, Mallory had completed the book, so the (new) ending would have been accounted for in the draft. The bigger question in my view is in how Greenleaf could possibly have typed the entire novel word-for-word from memory on Kane’s typewriter.

3. Why does Greenleaf bother to use the second key even when Kane has told him the door was open? (I know this has been asked before - the explanation that Columbo will keep the case open until he finds the key is hardly satisfactory, given that Columbo himself later works out that the door must have been open.)

That always bothered me too, but you could tell he wasn’t listening when Kane told him the door was open. Greenleaf didn’t know that Columbo had the lock of Mallory’s office changed and still felt compelled to provide what he thought was a piece of implicating evidence "stolen" from his car.

4. When Columbo first meets Greenleaf, he surely has no reason to suspect him. For all he knew at that point, Greenleaf and Mallory were close friends. Yet he makes Greenleaf listen to the shooting on a tape recording! Hardly a sensitive way to break the news.

Columbo didn’t suspect him when they first met. Yeah, it might have been a crude way to reveal what had happened, but he needed a voice ID from a close association and they had one right there in their own drunk tank.

5. Is this episode unusually clumsily written?

I wouldn't say that. I prefer to call these inconsistencies plot conveniences incorporated by writers under incredible pressure to pump stories out in rapid-fire succession, but the brilliant way they were delivered makes them forgivable.

1. What is the crashing noise on the tape recording immediately after the shooting?

I always took it to be the sound of Mallory's body collapsing.

2. How does Greenleaf know the ending to the book when (we assume, from the dictation) Mallory has not yet finished writing it, and the ending has been discussed only by Mallory and his agent?

This is a **** good question. No Mallory had not completed the book yet--he was dictating part of the ending when he was shot by Kane. So given that it wasn't done yet, there's no way that Wolpert (the manuscript courier) could have provided the ending to Greenleaf. This is in fact a big hole in the plot, given that Greenleaf was incriminated by knowing the newly-revised ending, when he actually had no way of knowing. The only way this makes sense is if Mallory had indeed finished dictating the entire book and on the night he was killed was going back and filling in material.

3. Why does Greenleaf bother to use the second key even when Kane has told him the door was open? (I know this has been asked before - the explanation that Columbo will keep the case open until he finds the key is hardly satisfactory, given that Columbo himself later works out that the door must have been open.)

This always bothered me too. It wasn't true that the killer needed to have a key, because it turned out that Kane didn't even actually use the key. And Greenleaf knew this. So whether Columbo was convinced of the need for a key or not, Geenleaf knew that it was simply the case that a key wasn't needed. The only reason that makes sense is that Greenleaf wanted to plant conclusive evidence that conencted Kane to the murder, so that there woould be no doubt about it and no one would ever suspect Greenleaf.

4. When Columbo first meets Greenleaf, he surely has no reason to suspect him. For all he knew at that point, Greenleaf and Mallory were close friends. Yet he makes Greenleaf listen to the shooting on a tape recording! Hardly a sensitive way to break the news.

Well, he kind of does have reason to suspect Greenleaf, if he has spoken to anyone at the party thrown by Mr. Neal the night of the murder. Greenleaf made threats against Mallory's life at that time, mere hours before the murder. (Yes, I know, we see Columbo find this information out for the first time later on, when talking to Neal and McRae at lunch. And he does act surprised. But it's at least possible that someone else had told the police about Greenleaf's threats earlier, and that Columbo was merely feigning ignorance).

Thanks John. That was the only explanation for (2) that I could think of as well.

As for (3), let me go over the logic once again. Before Columbo realises the door was open, he thinks that the door must have been opened with a key. The key Kane left on the floor didn't fit the new lock. But even if Kane had a second key which DID fit the new lock, why would he leave the old key on the floor? Greenleaf could hardly have brought both keys, used one to open the door, then dropped the other one on the floor. It doesn't make any sense.

And if Kane really was trying to frame Greenleaf, and had stolen Greenleaf's (first lock) key, how could Kane have a key for the second lock in any case? That doesn't make sense either!

Finally Greenleaf goes to the enormous risk of involving a locksmith (another potential witness against him) to cut a key for the third lock. A ridiculous decision.

Yeah tffff, I realized afterwards that it still doesn't make sense about the key. Greenleaf's plan was to make it look like Kane killed Mallory (which he did) and then tried to frame Greenleaf. So having Kane leave the key on the floor makes sense--it fits with the theory that Kane was trying to frame Greenleaf. When Greenleaf learns that the lock had been changed, that should have changed nothing. It's still the case that the key would look like Kane attempting to frame Greenleaf (If Kane had merely walked in through an unlocked door, as he did, how would he know that the lock had been changed?). Planting the new key on Kane only ruins the idea that Kane was trying to frame Greenleaf. If Kane had the new key, then he knew that the lock was changed and that the old key was obsolete. So knowing that, why would he plant the old key to frame Greenleaf? And how woould he get the new key anyway? As you say, it makes no sense. And it always bothered me, too, that in order to get the unnecessary new key, Greenleaf brings in a locksmith who not only would forever be a witness that could incriminate Greenleaf, but also might have been caught right in the act of showing up at Mallory's office to make the new key!

Perhaps the locksmith was trying to frame Eddie Kane.

Late to this, but re question 2, that must be a plot hole. When Mallory starts dictating the new pages, he says "That should finish the first DRAFT." So the ending only existed in the outline that Mallory and his agent discussed.
Greenleaf maybe got his hands on that somehow, but how would that incriminate him?

Well, it would incriminate him in that he's the only one other than Mallory himself and Eileen who had any information about the ending (and Eileen didn't know anything about the rest of the book). So therefore Greenleaf is the only person who could have planted the phony plot outline in Eddie Kane's apartment. No one else had any way of knowing the entire outline.

*bump*

Tfff,

I saw your post on the other thread. I hadn’t watched ‘Publish’ for maybe a couple of years, but your challenge prompted me to dig it out again (thanks! :)) , to double check what I’d missed. To answer your numbered points:

1. Mallory’s body falling to the floor seems the most plausible reason for the noise on the tape. But whatever the reason, I don't see it as a fatal plot hole.

2. Good question, but Greenleaf doesn’t need to read the ending to the book, just the revised outline (with Eileen’s newly proposed ending). When Columbo shows Eileen the outline that Greenleaf had typed, she says “It’s just like Alan had dictated it himself”(and Columbo, after thinking for a minute, replies “Maybe he did”). Hence it seems possible that Mallory had dictated the revised outline, and had the transcription company type it for him, earlier that week (possibly so that Eileen could submit it to Universal Studios). Then Wolpert the courier delivered the typed copy to Greenleaf, along with Mallory’s other work — whatever material had been transcribed from Mallory’s dictation tape.

3. Another good question, and I must admit that you and John saw details that I’d overlooked. But while it’s true that Greenleaf’s planting the bogus key on Kane’s keychain invalidates the frame-up, for the reasons that you guys gave, that could simply be a oversight on Greenleaf’s part, rather than the writer’s. Columbo told Greenleaf that when he finds the key, he will have found Mallory’s killer, and Greenleaf would instinctively think “well if that’s what it’s going to take to wrap this up quickly, and get you off my case forever, then I’ll happily oblige”. Then he executes his plan without properly thinking through the implications, even after Kane tells him that Mallory’s door was open (I agree that it would have been much better if the latter had been omitted from the storyline).

During the final scene, Columbo asks Greenleaf “But why would Kane even come back here?” (the day after the murder) and Greenleaf doesn’t have an answer, indicating that he hadn’t given the implications of his newly cut key enough careful thought.

Granted, it may have been sloppy plotting, but I think it can just as easily be explained as an careless oversight by the over-anxious Greenleaf.

4. There are at least two reasons why Columbo could have wanted to question Greenleaf:
i) He wanted confirmation that it was Mallory’s voice on the tape
ii) The building superintendent had told Columbo that Greenleaf had taken out a lease on Mallory’s apartment, and Greenleaf had been supplied with two keys. Hence Columbo took the opportunity to ask Greenleaf if he recognized the key that had been left behind after Mallory’s murder, which he says had been puzzling him.

Columbo didn’t necessarily suspect Greenleaf at this point. It seems to me that he merely wanted to find out more about the key, and who might have owned it.

For whatever it’s worth, that’s the way I saw it.

I reply only to items 2, 3 and 5, because I think the answers already provided to items 1 and 4 are quite satisfactory.
2. That is in my opinion a major plot hole: Greenleaf seems a very clever guy, so he had no reason to conceive such a difficult fake evidence as a synopsis of the novel typed on Kane's typewriter, that would be very time-consuming and dangerous to be discovered while doing, without mentioning that he had to wait until Mallory had dictated the book's end to write the synopsis. Moreover, the novel was supposed to be kept secret by Mallory, so Kane could not have known that his plot was being plagiarized. Greenleaf could more simply have claimed to Columbo that he, Kane and Mallory had a conversation about a plot and Kane later knew that Mallory was writing a novel (this fact was no secret) and suspected Mallory and Greenleaf to have stolen his idea; a claim that Columbo could not disprove, there being only reported conversations.
3. Greenleaf would have had great difficulty to replicate a key he didn't have: the locksmith would have suspected it was an illegal request, and that would have been a witness against him. Moreover, as previously explained in other posts, he had no reason to duplicate the second key. Greenleaf doesn't seem over-anxious, and he would surely have remembered how Kane explained to have entered through the open door, so there was no reason to plant a fake evidence of the second key. It isn't difficult to suspect a trap by Columbo with his insistence in finding the second key; it's strange that Greenleaf didn't recognize that.
5. Given what is stated above, I agree that this episode is one of the less plausible.
Anyway, I consider Jack Cassidy one of the most brilliant players as the offender in Columbo's series.