What Columbo would say if he was asked to collect da testimony of irate 'n' bickering witnesses who would need to be verbally placified and encouraged to get along wif each other so dat they could all speak coherently while relating to said famous detective what they saw.
What with Columbo's inherently calm and unassuming manner, he put people at ease, and so if he said, "I reckon I can peace the story together" during an investigation, you could generally count on his being able to do so.
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)