This sort of slow-moving episode begins with a murder victim I feel sorry for. "Ella Mae Maltby", a southern girl who plays a fiddle that was made by her grandfather. She's convinced she's going to be hitting the big time soon as she buys back her fiddle from a pawnbroker played by a more-New York City-accented-than-usual Arnold Moss.

Turns our Ella Mae was also a hard luck heroin addict or junkie of some sort. But she does seem to have a bit of a kind heart, and that's why it's difficult to hear Lloyd Battista (playing a limp-wristed sounding but previously married college professor) kill her. He does so because she won't sell him the bow to her fiddle, which he's convinced is made out of a woman's long blonde hair. (He'd previously tried to buy the bow from Moss's character, who said it was made out of common horsehair.)

Battista also plays a normal sounding police detective (sometimes these dual role performances by the same actor worked well, but at first I thought we were going to learn that Battista's character was schizophrenic) whose wife is attending a college class taught by...you guessed it...the murderous prof.

And we're on a collision course. Not the best episode, but on the second listen it was better than I thought it would be, and Battista's fey voiced character proves to be an interesting acting job for him. 