A man whose face is
not shown steps out of his car near the home of magazine publisher Arthur
Sinclair where a party is taking place consisting mostly of society’s elitists.
The man is holding a gun and sneaks up to the house taking position behind some
bushes.
Arthur Sinclair,
sipping from a glass of wine, walks out onto the patio alongside Sammy Hayes,
an unethical and sleazy private detective that Sinclair has hired for a sinister
plan he has devised. (A plan not made clear at this point). Sammy Hayes argues
with Sinclair, saying he’s worried about losing his license. Sinclair reminds Hayes
that he’s never worried about that before—an indication of previous dirty deeds
the P.I. had performed—and that he’s being paid well. Sinclair insists that
Hayes will stick to the plan and tells him to go back inside to join the other
guests. As Hayes walks away, the man with the gun hiding in the bushes shoots
Sinclair dead, drops the gun, and runs away. Hayes starts to chase after the
shooter, but stops and picks up the gun, which he recognizes as his own! (Hayes
never realized that his gun was missing? And how did the shooter get a hold of
it?)
All party-goers
inside the house rush out onto the patio after hearing gunshots. (Seriously? If
you hear gunshots outside on a patio, would you run out there?) The guests
stand over Sinclair’s body on the ground and then see Hayes holding a gun.
Their assumption is obvious from the expression on their faces. Hayes hollers
back at them. “I didn’t do it!”
Regardless, Sammy
Hayes is arrested and held for the murder of Arthur Sinclair. At Lt. Jacoby’s
office, Peter Gunn is pouring himself and Jacoby a cup of coffee. Jacoby
wonders why Sam Hayes, who should have used his one phone call allowed to call
a lawyer, had instead used it to call Peter Gunn. Jacoby doesn’t hold back in expressing
his hatred for the man and how he’d wanted to have Hayes’ P.I. license revoked
long ago. Jacoby also wonders why Gunn would bother to help out a man like that
and Gunn says that he owes Hayes a favor. (For what reason is never made clear
in this episode).
Gunn meets with Sam
Hayes who is all hyper and sweating while pacing around his jail cell yelling
how he didn’t kill Sinclair. (The performance is a bit overdramatic.) Gunn
wants to know what Hayes was doing at that party of high society people. Hayes
says he was a guest, but Gunn isn’t buying it. Still in a state of panic, Hayes
admits that he was at the party for other reasons, but that he can’t say why,
only that he didn’t kill Sinclair and begs Gunn to clear his name. Gunn says
he’ll look into it, but doesn’t buy that Hayes is clean.
Peter Gunn arrives at
the posh Sinclair home where the party is still going on. He rings the doorbell
and the door is answered by an eccentric named Waldo who is heavily into
astrology. When Gunn introduces himself and says he’s there to see Mrs.
Sinclair, the first words out of Waldo’s mouth are, “Leo, obviously.” Waldo
continues rambling about various astrological connections of the sun, planet,
and stars until Gunn manages to shrug him off. Gunn then meets with Arthur
Sinclair’s attorney, Paul Denner. Denner is aware of Gunn’s earlier phone call
to Louise Sinclair and he leads Gunn to see her. Gunn looks around at the many guests
in the room and mentions how they seem to be unphased by the recent murder of
the homeowner. A star-struck Gunn then spots and recognizes famous composer and
musician Abel Kinard sitting at a piano, now elderly and who appears to be
suffering from a severe case of spaced-out dementia. Gunn takes a moment to
walk over to Kinard to let him know he’s a huge fan of his music.
Gunn then walks into
a study where an intoxicated Louise Sinclair, speaking with a southern accent,
was expecting him. Mrs. Sinclair is drinking wine and sobbing. Gunn asks if she
thinks Sammy Hayes killed her husband. All she can say is that Arthur Sinclair
was a fine man. She repeats it several times and then starts to fall over, but
Gunn holds her up. She then tells Gunn it may be best if he visits her another
time and she leaves the room.
Gunn heads over to a diner
where he plays a jazz song on the juke box and then takes a seat at the bar. A
drunkard and former musician named Fuzzy Crane arrives apologizing for being
late. He sets down his trumpet case and sits beside Gunn, who already has three
shot glasses filled with booze and ready for Fuzzy. Under each glass there’s a
bill for this man who appears to be a regular informant for Gunn. As Fuzzy
drinks the shots and places the bills in his pocket, Gunn asks questions. He
asks about Abel Kinard. (It seems odd that Gunn investigating a murder would
first wonder about a senile old man he’d seen at the Sinclair home). Fuzzy
explains that after Kinard’s musical career was over he’d “flipped” into a
sanitarium. He says that Arthur Sinclair stood by Kinard after he’d flipped and
bailed him out of the sanitarium. But that it was mostly about Sinclair wanting
to be accompanied by “big names.” As Fuzzy gets ready to leave, Gunn picks up
the horn case and notices how light it weighs. He opens it only to find some
raggedy old clothes inside. When Gunn asks what happened to the horn, Fuzzy
replies that he’d hocked it at a pawn shop. Gunn gives Fuzzy more cash and
tells him to get his horn back.
Back at Lt. Jacoby’s
office, Jacoby tells Gunn to stop wasting his time looking into a bunch of
weird people at the Sinclair home, insisting that Sammy Hayes is guilty because
his own gun was the murder weapon. Jacoby then gets a phone call that Hayes
grabbed a guard’s gun and escaped; that he’s “holed up” on the top floor. They
race up the stairs where cops are surrounding a locked room and Jacoby yells
through the door for Hayes to give himself up, only to have a gunshot blast
through the door missing everyone. Inside the room Hayes yells once again that
he didn’t kill Sinclair and he’s not going to be jailed for it. Hayes opens a
window and starts to step out to escape from the building. After Jacoby shoots
at the doorknob and kicks the door open, Hayes slips from the window and falls
to his death.
Back in Jacoby’s
office, Jacoby and Gunn discuss potential repercussions for the police department
after a prisoner dies while in custody. Gunn wonders if Jacoby still thinks
Hayes killed Sinclair. Jacoby says he’s “still in the dark” about that. Gunn
asks where Sinclair’s lawyer, Paul Denner, and Waldo the astrologer were during
the murder. Jacoby says they weren’t in the house and were having dinner
together somewhere else. Gunn replies how “nice and cozy” it is for them to
have an alibi for each other. Gunn isn’t going to stop investigating even
though Sammy Hayes is now dead. He tells Jacoby, “I started it; might as well
finish it.”
Gunn arrives at Sammy
Hayes Private Investigations office and finds it ransacked. He is then attacked
from behind and gets hit in the back of the head with a gun. Gunn is knocked
down to the floor temporarily incapacitated and ends up under a table. After
shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he starts to sit up and by sheer
coincidence finds an envelope pinned to the table’s inner frame. (Surely what
the intruder who’d attacked Gunn had been looking for). The envelope reads:
“File on Bernie Lutz.” Gunn detaches the envelope from the pin, opens it, and
begins reading papers.
Gunn arrives at
Waldo’s apartment and rings the door buzzer. Waldo opens the door appearing
pleasantly surprised, shouting, “Leo, how delightful!” But before he could
continue Gunn pushed him against the wall and manhandles him by his night robe
lapels. Gunn tells Waldo that he was the intruder 20 minutes ago in Hayes’
office trying to bounce a gun off his skull. Gunn pulls out the paperwork he’d
found and shows it to Waldo, saying this is what he was looking for; a file
proving that Waldo is actually Bernie Lutz, a hoodlum in hiding with warrants
for his arrest. Gunn then starts to choke Waldo’s (Lutz’s) neck to force a
confession out of him. (A confession that viewers don’t get to hear).
Gunn arrives back at
the Sinclair home where he finds Mrs. Sinclair’s luggage all packed up. Gunn
asks Louise Sinclair, still boozing it up with wine, if she thinks she can run
far enough away to outrun the memory of Arthur Sinclair. Gunn says he knows all
about the dirty money received from Sinclair’s scandalous magazine. Paul Denner
walks into the room pointing a revolver at Gunn and says that Louise Sinclair
had no part of it. Gunn tells Denner that it’s too late; that Waldo has already
filled him in on Denner’s horoscope. Louise is surprised to see Denner with a
gun and sits on a sofa chair wondering what in the world is going on. Paul
Denner tells Gunn that they all benefited from Sinclair’s “dirty dollar.” He
informs Gunn that Sinclair knew he was being investigated by authorities for
corrupt activities and to protect himself he was going to place the magazine in
Mrs. Sinclair’s name and let her “face the scandal.” Paul Denner refused to
allow that to happen, so he shot and killed Arthur Sinclair with Sammy Hayes’
gun. He was also fed up with the way Sinclair had been treating Louise for so
many years. Gunn tells Denner that he’d killed Sinclair because he’s in love
with Louise Sinclair. Mrs. Sinclair, however, apparently doesn’t feel the same
way for Denner. She gets up from her seat and tells Denner that she loved
Arthur Sinclair and then slaps Denner several times in the face. Denner is
shocked by Louise’s reaction. Feeling completely dejected he hands Gunn the
revolver.
QUOTES:
At the Sinclair home when Gunn is first approached by
astrological signs enthusiast, Waldo…
Waldo: “Leo, obviously. Yes, Leo...You are aware of
your adverse days?”
Gunn: “This may be one.”
NOTES:
Sammy Hayes had been locked up in jail on suspicion of murder for at
least a day or two and then died when he fell to his death from a top floor
window. Why didn’t Waldo search Hayes’ office much sooner? He instead waited
until after Hayes’ death when, coincidentally, Peter Gunn had also gone to
check Hayes’ office and was attacked from behind by Waldo.
The role of Paul Denner was played by Simon Scott, who was Chief Barney
Metcalf on The Mod Squad from 1968 to 1972.
DECEASED: Magazine publisher
and tycoon Arthur Sinclair is shot by his attorney, Paul Denner. Private
investigator Sammy Hayes falls to his death from window near top of police
station building when he slipped trying to escape.
Total Gunn Kills: 0 -
Series Total: 7
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BLOG: S01/E24: "THE UGLY FRAME"
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