The rabbi picked it up and read aloud. "'Received from Joseph Kestler for official custody a bottle containing eighteen pills.'" He broke off and looked at Lanigan. "Eighteen?"
"You caught that, I see."
"Chai." Miriam murmured, and her husband smiled.
The chief looked at them inquiringly.
The rabbi proceeded to explain. "Chai means eighteen in Hebrew, and it also means life. It's a sort of numerology some of the old rabbis used to play with. You see, the Hebrew alphabet is also a number system, like A is one, B two, C three and so on. So AB would be twelve and BC twenty-three and ABC would be a hundred and twenty-three.'"
"I understand."
"Some of the numbers spell out words, which gave rise to a lot of involved and mystical biblical interpretation. Some of those word-number relationships stuck and came into common usage. One of them was chai, eighteen, which is also the word for life. People frequently maka charitable contributions in eighteen or multiples of eighteen." He smiled. "And it's useful. If someone offers, say, fifteen dollars for charity, it's easy to jack up the contribution by suggesting they make it chai dollars, which would be eighteen, a net gain of three dollars and practically painless."
"What if he planned to give twenty? Mightn't he then reduce it to eighteen for the same reason?" asked the chief.
Miriam laughed. "A good fund raiser would try to jack him up to thirty-six, double chat." She took the receipt from her husband and studied it." Chai seems kind of inappropriate in this business, though. What's so special about eighteen pills?"
The chief looked at her fondly. "Well, if there are eighteen and he took one, that would mean there were nineteen originally, and that's a funny number to prescribe, as a matter of fact, the label on the bottle said they were to be taken four times a day, so nineteen—"
"I see." said Miriam excitedly. "You think they gave him two and that may have done it."
"How about it. David?" The chief turned to the rabbi. "You were there."
The rabbi's brow furrowed as he strove to remember. "Let's see. I heard the doorbell and I looked out the window and saw the cruising car, then Mrs. Kestler came up with the pills. I remember her twisting the cap off the bottle and teasing out the cotton-batting plug." He shook his head. "That's all. I turned my head at that point."
"Why? Did something happen?"
The rabbi shook his head. "Nothing special. You see, he was an old man and his hands shook, but more when someone was watching him. So I turned away when she handed him the glass of water."
"Then you didn't see whether she gave him one pill or two?" the chief asked.
The rabbi shook his head regretfully. "What did you have in mind?"
"Well, I haven't checked it out with the doctor yet." said Lanigan, "but it occurred to me that while one pill might be harmless, two might not be. From what the sergeant told me, it seems that the old man had an allergic reaction. Now you know that people who are sensitive to certain things can go for years taking them and suffer no bad effects, and then they take a little more than normal and they get a reaction."
"I see." The rabbi nodded. "And why would Mrs. Kestler give the old gentleman two pills when the prescription called for one?"
Lanigan sat back expansively in his chair. "Now there you enter the realm of possibilities, and I see two, the first and most likely is that she gave him two because she thought two was better than one. My father was apt to do something like that, he always took a little more than the doctor prescribed on the general theory, I guess, that the dosage was the minimum that a patient could be expected to take. In those days all medicines tasted anywhere from bad to horrible, he wanted to show, as a lesson in character for my brother Pat and me, he could take it."
"No bad effects, I trust?" said the rabbi, smiling.
Lanigan chuckled. "My guess is that as bad as they tasted, medicines weren't so powerful in those days, except maybe for castor oil."
"And the second possibility?"
"I get the feeling that the care of the old man rested largely on his daughter-in-law's shoulders. Suppose she gets tired of being the drudge. Suppose she gets tired of waiting on the old man hand and foot, a sick old man can be troublesome, demanding. So what if she gave him two pills with the idea of getting rid of him?"
The rabbi shrugged. "And how would she know that two pills would do it?"
"She could have assumed it. Possibly the doctor might have cautioned them not to give him more than the prescribed dose."
"But that would be murder." exclaimed Miriam.
"If it were proved, a good lawyer could make it manslaughter or a mercy killing," said Lanigan. "But you'd be surprised at the number of those kind of killings that are committed, a nitroglycerin tablet knocked out of a man's hand while he's having a heart attack, a piece of candy withheld from a diabetic going into insulin shock, that business a few years back with Isaac Hirsh here in town. Very few of them ever come to the courts, but wa hear about them in the police."
"Do you check the possibilities of murder every time someone dies even though it's almost certain to be death from natural causes?" asked Miriam.
"Of course not. But if the death is awfully convenient for someone, or if someone is going to get badly hurt by it as Dr. Cohen might be in this case, I can't help wondering, and sometimes I inquire around a little."
"And those are your two possibilities?" asked the rabbi. "Surely, there are any number of others."
"Like what?"
Again the rabbi shrugged. "The most likely is that the drugstore put only nineteen pills in the bottle. Or Joe Kestler might have told his wife to give his father a couple of pills."
"Why would he do that?"
"For the same reason you suggested she might have done the same thing, and that could account for Joe Kestler making a fuss about the autopsy. Of course, two pills would probably have done him no great harm in the first place."
"I think you're right," said Lanigan regretfully. "It's just that Dr. Cohen is in a jam and I'd like to help him."
"Well, if you're considering possibilities—" "Go on."
"The pharmaceutical house that manufactured the pills might have made a slight change in the formulation. Or that particular batch could have gone bad. Or the pill could have interacted with something the old man took unbeknownst to Dr. Cohen. Want more?"
"No. I get the point." Lanigan grinned sheepishly. "I wasn't trying to pin a murder rap on the Kestlers. It just occurred to me that I might be able to use it to keep Joe Kestler from shooting off his big mouth and hurting a nice fellow like the doctor."
The rabbi considered. "Well, you could still use it for that purpose. But the danger is that if you pointed out there was a pill missing and it suggested that old Kestler might have taken two, contrary to the doctor's orders, Joe might wonder about his wife. It could go hard with her."
"You're always so damn helpful. David." said Lanigan ruefully as he lounged to his feet.
When he left. Miriam asked. "Do you reallv think he happened in just because he was in the neighborhood. David?"
"Not if he went to the trouble of making a copy of the sergeant's receipt, and that suggests that Lanigan is suspicious of Kestler's death."
"I don't see—"
"My car has been in the driveway ever since I returned from the morning service around half past seven, all right. Lanigan goes to Dr. Cohen's office in Lynn. Say he had the first appointment, which I suppose would be around nine. Why didn't he stop by on his way back? Instead he went to the police station, and then came here."