Unfastening her safety belt, Miriam opened the door, as she slid off the seat, another bead rolled off her lap onto the car cushion. "There's another one, David. It's gone down in the crack between the seat and the back cushion." Outside now, she bent forward into the car and with splayed fingers extended groped down into the crack. "No, I can't reach it."
"Get in," he said.
"But David—"
"Get in," he ordered peremptorily.
He set the car in motion. "Harris Lane is back there," she said meekly. "Aren't you going to turn?"
"I want to go to the stationhouse first."
She remembered the prayerbook on the seat between them. "Oh well, coming back, it will be on the right, and there'll be no chance of missing it."
"Don't worry, we'll get to the party in good time."
He drove to the end of Minerva Road and then headed for the center of town, negotiating the narrow crooked streets with reckless speed until he reached the police station, he was out of the car and running up the granite steps of the stationhouse when Miriam noticed that he had forgotten to take the prayerbook with him. Shaking her head at his characteristic absent-mindedness, she picked up the siddur and followed him.
Chief Lanigan, coat in hand, came out of his office. "Hello. David." He looked beyond him. "And Miriam, too. What's up?"
"Miriam lost her pearls," the rabbi gasped.
"You mean they were stolen? You've come to report a theft?"
"No, no, she was wearing them."
"They're not real pearls, Chief," Miriam explained, "and the string was frayed."
"Then..." Lanigan looked from one to the other. "You better come in." He led the way into his office. "Now what's this all about?"
"The pearls," the rabbi began. "Miriam broke the strand and it gave me an idea about this business. Your theory is that Arnold switched the bottles while McLane was away from his station getting the mop or while he was cleaning up. Now picture it, they each have a pill counter in front of them. It's a kind of plastic tray with a trough on the side, they count out the pills on the tray and then tilt it so the pills slide or roll into the trough, there's a spout on the trough that they insert in the bottle, and the pills slide down. No chance of a pill rolling away."
"I’ve seen them."
"Now suppose you want to switch the pills after they've been put up in their proper bottles."
"Then you dump them back in the trays again," said Lanigan promptly, "and you switch trays."
"Right." said the rabbi. "And in either case, there would be the right number of pills in each bottle. But suppose you didn't have a tray, not even a table, then how would you make the switch? You'd have to empty one bottle into the palm of your hand, then you pour the contents of the second bottle into the empty bottle, then you have to feed the pills you've got in the palm of your hand into the second bottle, and it would be a miracle if one didn't roll away."
"What are you suggesting, David?"
"That it was Safferstein who switched those pills, while he was sitting in his car under the street lamp, before the cruising car came along."
"Just because there was a pill missing?" Lanigan smiled. "You yourself suggested half a dozen ways in which that pill could be missing when I first spoke to you about it."
"True," the rabbi admitted, "but we also have to keep in mind that he had both bottles and time enough to make the switch without fear of being observed."
"But why would he want to hurt the Kestlers? He didn't even know them."
"He didn't?"
"No, and they didn't know him."
The rabbi nodded as he digested this information. "All right, then let's consider all possibilities."
"You going to work some of that whatdoyoucallit— pulpil— on me?" asked Lanigan.
"Pilpul," the rabbi corrected. "Why not? Talmudic pilpul is just logical reasoning that makes use of fine distinctions."
The chief grinned. "Go ahead. I'm in no hurry. It's you folks who seem to be dressed for the evening."
"The Bernsteins are expecting us," Miriam reminded him. "They're having a lot of people over."
"Then we won't be missed," the rabbi answered tartly. "Besides, no one comes on time." He turned to Lanigan. "Let's suppose it was Safferstein."
"Why should we?"
"Why shouldn't we? It's only an assumption, something to start on. Besides, there are the reasons I gave, so it isn't a frivolous assumption."
"All right." Lanigan tossed his coat on the desk, and motioning his visitors to seats, he pulled back his swivel chair. Miriam sat down, but her husband remained standing.
"Let's clear the ground first," the rabbi began. "How?"
"Oh, by eliminating the obvious," said the rabbi breezily. "I mean, that if we assume that Safferstein switched the pills, then it couldn't have been an accident."
"It was you who urged it was an accident originally," Lanigan pointed out smugly.
"But that was when we thought it happened in the drugstore, there, however unlikely, it's possible. But not sitting alone in the car like a small boy who might play with them and then get them in the wrong bottles."
Lanigan grinned. "I guess I can allow that."
"So it was intentional." the rabbi continued, "whether as a joke, or—"
"I can't see how a grown man could possibly consider it a joke to switch medicines on a couple of sick people, one of them his wife."
"Neither can I." said the rabbi. "So it means he did it to hurt someone, and probably not Kestler, since he didn't know him. But that suggests Mrs. Safferstein as the intended victim."
"Not a very good suggestion." said Lanigan. "If it was his wife he wanted to hurt, he would have gone right home and given her one of the pills. But he didn't go home at all, he went to the Kaplan house instead."
"Why?"
"He said because it was storming so hard and he wanted to get in out of the weather."
The rabbi began pacing the floor, his head back and his eyes fixed on the ceiling as the others watched, he stopped suddenly and turned to Lanigan. "Do you know where Kaplan's house is?"
"Of course."
"And Safferstein, do you know where he lives?"
"Certainly."
"Well, I just found out." said the rabbi. "Safferstein's house is no further from Town-Line Drugs than Kaplan's. So if he were bothered about driving in the storm, he could just as easily have driven home."
Lanigan's brow furrowed, and his head made little motions as he followed the two routes in his mind's eye. Finally, he nodded. "You're right, give or take fifty yards."
"So why did he go to the Kaplan house?" "You tell me," said Lanigan.
The rabbi smiled. "It's strange, isn't it? His wife is sick, so he runs out to get her medicine, and then doesn't go home to give it to her. It's what started me thinking of him. Because if he had made the switch, there was no point in going home, he couldn't give her the pills he had with him, since they were Kestler's. Nevertheless, I think he would have gone home anyway and made some excuse for not having the medicine, if only for the sake of appearances."
"Then why didn't he?"
"Because he had to go to Kaplan's, of course."
"There was someone there he had to see?" asked Lanigan. "Kaplan?"
The rabbi shook his head. "No, not Kaplan. Since it was the pills he was concerned with. I suppose it was Dr. Muntz, the man who had prescribed them."
"What would he want with Dr. Muntz?"
"To show him the pills, I presume," said the rabbi quietly.
"But he didn't."
"No, he didn't, that's the irony of the situation, he wasn't able to because he was himself the victim of a switch, he had the pills in his coat pocket, and someone took his coat by mistake."
"But if he had shown them." Lanigan insisted, "then nothing would have happened, the doctor would have spotted the mistake right away, there might even have been time to call the Kestlers, then no one would have got hurt."