CHAPTER THREE
The hospital had white walls and a tile floor with lines leading through it, color coordinated to different destinations within. The windows were hung with orange curtains. Columbo, with Kitsuragi close behind him, opened a door despite the protestations of a young woman, Doris, with her hair in a green bouffant cap which matched her scrubs. Doris held a stack of clean white towels.
“Excuse us, Miss,” said Kitsuragi.
“Excuse me,” Columbo said at the same time.
“This is off limits,” insisted Doris.
“I’m sorry,” replied Columbo. “I’m supposed to meet Dr. Lansberg and they said he was in here.” He pointed into the white tiled room where surgeons washed their hands.
“Lieutenant Columbo?” asked a surgeon at a sink, looking over his shoulder. Lansberg was a man in his sixties with gray hair and mustache, wearing a surgical scrub cap and scrubs.
“Sorry I’m late. My motor carriage, it broke down right on the motorway,” Columbo pointed. “I radioed in and they towed us back to the station. And this guy Kim, he drives us here in no time. No time at all. I think I got twenty more gray hairs in that passenger seat.”
“We were late, and it really wasn’t that fast,” replied Kitsuragi.
“Oh, you’re the ones who wanted to know about Dr. Willis?” asked Lansberg.
“Yes Sir,” confirmed Kitsuragi.
The detectives walked up to Lansberg, who continued to scrub his arms. Columbo fetched out the medical papers Dr. Willis had in front of him on the bed. They rustled as he flipped through them. “The medical report that you sent him, Sir, it had something to do with…it says collagen fibers and hyperplasia. At any rate, it’s very hard for a layman to understand. I gather it has something to do with Dr. Willis’s prostate.”
Lansberg scrubbed his nails, his hands covered in lather. “Henry’s prostate was quite subject to infection, yes.”
“Then it was serious?” Columbo asked.
“Well, the prostate normally degenerates as a man grows older, Lieutenant. It becomes more serious. This might have become malignant,” explained Lansberg. “And so I recommended surgical removal.”
“I see,” said Columbo. “Well, I guess that would put a man into a deep depression. It certainly would me.”
“Some trepidation, certainly,” said Kitsuragi.
“Oh, no, I really don’t think so,” argued Lansberg. He bent to rinse his hands and arms. “Especially in the case of a doctor. He would know better than anyone else that removal of the prostate is a very good operation. Very highly successful.”
“Then why wasn’t the operation performed, Sir?” asked Columbo.
“Ah,” Lansberg said and smiled, holding up a finger and turning away from the sink. “Because Henry Willis was a diagnostician with a firm belief in antibiotics.”
Doris walked over to Lansberg to assist him now that he had clean hands.
“He was not a surgeon,” Lansberg continued. He stood with his hands held up. “His feeling about surgery was that it should only be used as a case of last resort.” He pointed to the cloth mask which hung on his neck over the front of his scrub shirt. “Mask.”
Doris reached over from behind Lansberg, lifted the mask, and tied it behind his head. The mask muffled the surgeon’s voice slightly.
“As a matter of fact, he often chided us about being too quick with the knife,” Lansberg said.
“That’s the kind of doctor I like,” said Columbo.
Another surgeon poked his head in through a pair of double doors. “Dr. Lansberg, we’re ready for you.”
“Thank you. Excuse me.” Lansberg turned and headed towards the doors.
Columbo stepped forward and held out his hand. “One more thing, Doctor. Could he have been in bad health in any other way?”
“Henry came to me about his prostate,” replied Lansberg, speaking much more quickly now that he was in an obvious hurry. “I know of nothing else, excuse me.”
“Thank you,” said Columbo.
“Oh Lieutenant,” said Lansberg, poking his head back through the doors. “Would you care to observe the surgery?”
“Me?” asked Columbo.
“You, or your colleague.”
Columbo held his hand up and quickly moved to the other door leading to the hall. “Oh no. Just the sight of blood makes me sick.”
Kitsuragi nodded farewell. “Not this time, thank you.” He followed Columbo out the door.
They emerged into the hall and a police woman approached, holding a folder. Sergeant Lefkowitz held her hat in one hand and had a satchel over her shoulder. She looked down at the file in her hand, then back at Columbo.
“Why did you get into homicide if you can’t stand the sight of blood?” asked Kitsuragi.
Before Columbo could answer, Lefkowitz said, “You are Lieutenant Columbo. Sergeant Lefkowitz downtown.”
“Well, how do you do, Sergeant? Something I can do for you?” asked Columbo. He stopped and moved closer to look over her shoulder at the folder.
“You don’t look like your picture,” she accused.
“Oh, well this was taken ten years ago. That was before I grew all this hair.” Columbo gestured at the generous poof of hair. “You see, my wife likes it this way.”
Lefkowitz slid the file back into a folder and gave Columbo a side-eye. “You should get a new picture for the files.”
“You’re absolutely right,” agreed Columbo.
They approached an elevator and Columbo pressed the down button.
“You know, Lieutenant, I’m in the homicide office at least once a week,” mentioned Lefkowitz. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you there.”
“Well, I don’t get down there too much.” Columbo smiled. “None of the murders take place there, you know?”
Lefkowitz wasn’t amused. Kitsuragi was, but he didn’t show it. He knew she couldn’t have tracked him all the way to the hospital to tell Columbo to have a new picture taken for his file, and wondered what this was all going to be about.
“I work in the radiocomputer section and the radiocomputer says that you haven’t been to the pistol range in five years,” Lefkowitz informed Columbo. She raised her eyebrows and looked at Columbo. She looked down, not figuratively but literally, since she was maybe a head taller than he was.
Oh, thought Kitsuragi. There it is. “Five years,” Kitsuragi repeated incredulously.
“Five years? Oh, it couldn’t be that long,” lied Columbo.
“You are aware, Lieutenant, that you’re required to meet a shooting standard every six months,” Lefkowitz reminded him.
“Yes, of course, on the test range,” agreed Columbo.
“I’m sure we can find time to swing by the firing range,” Kitsuragi told Columbo encouragingly.
Columbo gave Kitsuragi a cryptic look. “Thanks, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.” He looked back at Lefkowitz. “Well, the radiocomputer must’ve gone haywire. You better check the records out.”
Lefkowitz shook her head and chuckled. “Lieutenant, the radiocomputer seldom errors.”
“Really,” said Kitsuragi dryly.
“Well, I’m sure it doesn’t, but in this case, the records must be misplaced,” said Columbo. As he spoke, the elevator door opened behind him. He looked slyly at the sergeant with his hand on the side of his face.
“All right,” Lefkowitz said. “I’ll double check to be sure.”
The two detectives stepped into the elevator.
Lefkowitz called through the doors as they closed, “But if I don’t find your records, you’ll have to report to the range!”
Columbo waved to her and said, “I understand!”
After the doors had closed, Kitsuragi turned to his colleague. “Why haven’t you been to the firing range in five years?”
“The records must be wrong,” insisted Columbo.
“You’re clearly lying,” accused Kitsuragi.
“Oh hush.”
“You stole Dr. Willis’s book?” whispered Kitsuragi.
“No, no,” reassured Columbo. He’d directed Kitsuragi to drive to the bookstore where Willis had bought the book he’d left on his nightstand.
The bookstore had hand-lettered signs designating the different sections of bookshelves and tables. A sign on a pillar read, “Sorry, but we must insist that the children do not handle the popup books, many thanks” in all capitals, written with a red pen, with “many thanks” underlined. Columbo found the bookstore shopkeep and asked him about Willis’s book.
“That’s a bubble of a book,” the shopkeep replied, a young man in a gray suit with neatly combed brown hair and glasses. “You see, Mrs. McTwig was a floor scrubber who wins the Ubi Sunt? Sweepstakes. Well, you can imagine the possibilities. She goes to Sur-la-Clef for a face-lift and then off to Vredefort for a new wardrobe, compromises herself in Kedra with a ribald Lothario, then falls in love with a young exiled prince from Graad who happens to be a little person. When last seen, they were frolicking together in the jungles of Semenine on safari.”
As he described the book, the shopkeep walked around the bookstore, collecting books that had been left off the shelves. He carried them with him back to the register.
“That’s quite a yarn,” commented Columbo.
“Well, you have to read it to appreciate the witty concept of romance and comedy,” said the shopkeep. “That will be seven reál.”
“I don’t want to purchase the book, Sir. This has already been purchased by Dr. Henry Willis,” explained Columbo.
“I see,” said the shopkeep.
Columbo and Kitsuragi introduced themselves.
“I wonder if you could tell me, Sir, the date of purchase,” requested Columbo.
“Yes, Sir,” said the shopkeep. “That’s the late Dr. Henry Willis. An avid reader. And one of our dear customers.” He opened the register and started looking through receipts. “Let’s see, Willis. Yes, Sir. Here it is. Dr. Willis purchased that book on the thirteenth of this month.”
Columbo, holding his cigar in his teeth such that it stuck straight out from his face, stopped to look into space and make mental calculations. He silently counted on his fingers. After reaching whatever conclusion that information gave him, he turned to the shopkeep and said, still holding the cigar in his mouth, “Thank you very much.”
“Welcome, Sir.”
Kitsuragi leaned against the doorway between the hall and the gymnasium, with Columbo standing beside him holding a brown paper bag. There was a wooden floor, a large mirror against one wall, gray wainscoting, and the horizontal bars mounted on the walls typical of a dance studio. A folded white towel lay on the top of a piano where a man played a cheerful tune. Three people watched from the sidelines as about a dozen dancers practiced out on the floor. Wheeler wore a yellow scarf tied around her head, a floral shirt, and pale pants. The others around her, all much younger, wore top hats with regular, casual clothing, and carried canes. Of the people watching, one was a woman in a pink button up named Pat, another a man in a checkered shirt and jeans, and the third was Diamond in a dark red velvet jacket and a salmon red turtleneck. He watched Wheeler attentively as she performed some number among the many other dancers. Despite her age, Wheeler remained nimble and coordinated, quite an athletic woman. Her face beamed with radiant joy.
After spinning past Fred, the one male dancer without a top hat, her presumed partner in this choreographed number, her smile faded and she called out, “No, no, no, stop!” Wheeler put a hand to her head and looked down, waving her other hand in the air. “It’s not right. It’s not right.” She walked over to Diamond. “It’s too fast. It’s jerky.” She held a hand out toward the piano player and smiled politely at him. “Would you please stop playing while I’m trying to talk?”
Columbo walked in and sat on a couch near one wall. Kitsuragi followed but remained standing. They watched the scene unfold.
“She is quite agile,” remarked Kitsuragi.
Columbo just nodded.
“It should be smoother and have more character,” said Wheeler.
Fred said, “Wait, wait, it’s really easy. Now, listen, I’m getting to you on the fourth beat.”
Wheeler put her hands on her hips and faced Fred. “My dear young man, you’re getting to me before the fourth beat!” She turned to the other dancers, who continued to practice without her. “Would you please stop moving around back there? I can’t concentrate.”
“Alright, alright kids take a break,” instructed Diamond. “What we’re trying to do takes a lot of care and a lot of time to get the precision we need.” He turned to the woman in the pink button up. “Pat, what can we do about those last four bars?”
“Fred, why don’t you go behind her and catch her on the other side,” suggested Pat. “I think that would help.”
“Good. And Grace, you got that?” said Diamond.
“Alright,” said Fred, “But it’s gonna be awkward.”
Wheeler stared at Fred, then turned to Diamond.
After a beat, Diamond said, “You’re going to make it un-awkward. Okay?” He turned from Fred to Wheeler. “Grace, you try it with Pat.”
Wheeler, patting down her neck with the towel from the top of the piano, nodded. “Alright,” she said softly, and walked back out onto the floor.
“Five, six, seven, eight,” said Wheeler and the piano player began to play as Wheeler and Pat began to dance beside one another, concluding with Pat taking hold of Wheeler’s hand.
“Okay?” checked Diamond.
“Yep!” confirmed Pat.
“Try it with Fred,” said Diamond.
Wheeler tried the modified choreography with Fred now instead of Pat. Fred hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the change yet, so Wheeler walked away and cried out, “Oh no, this is just ridiculous! I’m not going to waste my time and energy with rank amateurs.” She retrieved the towel again from the piano and turned to Diamond. “I’ll be in my dressing room. When you work things out properly, call me.” She put the towel over her neck and walked toward the door.
When she passed Columbo and Kitsuragi, Columbo called out, “Mrs. Willis!”
“Oh, uh.” Wheeler tried to remember the detectives’ names.
“Columbo, Madam,” reminded Columbo.
“Kitsuragi,” reminded Kitsuragi.
Wheeler looked down and shook her head, confused and a little out of breath. “Those names are very unusual. I don’t for the life of me know why I can’t remember them.”
“Well you got a great deal on your mind, Madam,” said Columbo, and he gestured toward the dancers.
Wheeler sighed. “Show business can be very difficult. You are lucky you’re in another line of work.”
“Listen, all I know is I sit here, I watched you, in my mind I’m no expert, to me, you’re a great dancer,” said Columbo.
Wheeler smiled just a little. “Well, thank you.” She noticed the paper bag Columbo held in his hands as she stepped over to sit on the couch. “Is that your lunch there?”
“No, Madam, I’ve already eaten.” Columbo sat back down beside Wheeler.
Kitsuragi sat down on the other side of Columbo.
“Actually, this is the book your husband was reading before…” Columbo said.
“Before?” asked Wheeler.
“Before he died,” said Columbo.
Across his colleague, Kitsuragi watched Wheeler’s expression. She looked confused and concerned, looking forward as if she wasn’t certain about what she was hearing.
“I’m really sorry to bother you about all this again,” apologized Columbo. “I just want to be absolutely certain that it was suicide the way everybody thinks.”
Wheeler’s brow furrowed and she looked at Columbo with alarm.
“Do you see this? The page is dog-eared,” Columbo said and held the book open in his lap.
Wheeler looked down at the book and her face relaxed a little, back to familiar territory. “Yes, Henry had a habit of turning the page down that way when he finished reading for the night.” Her mouth stretched in grief, the confusion replaced by loss.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Madam. Your husband bought this book three days before he died, on the thirteenth. According to the butler, on the night of the thirteenth he read from this book. The first dog-ear would indicate sixty-six pages,” said Columbo.
“I see,” said Wheeler.
Columbo turned the pages of the book to the next dog ear. “The second dog-ear is on page 122 that would be the second night’s reading. And Raymond is sure he saw him reading that night, too. On the third night, the night that he died, there is no dog-ear.”
“What particularly interests you about that?” asked Wheeler.
“Well, that indicates that he didn’t do any reading, but the butler is positive that he saw him reading when he brought him his sleeping pills and milk.”
Wheeler sighed shakily and said, “Forgive me, Lieutenant, I’m missing what you’re getting at.”
“Well, maybe I’m just a nut for details. But the book was found closed on the night table. Now, he must have closed it and put it there. But why didn’t he dog-ear the page?”
“I don’t know…Maybe he just forgot to.”
Columbo paused, closed the book, and crossed his legs. “From my experience, Madam, I’ve discovered that people don’t usually forget to do that which they usually do.”
“That’s very confusing,” Wheeler told him.
“It sounds that way,” agreed Columbo. “I’m trying to reconstruct exactly what Dr. Willis was doing just before he died.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Wheeler said softly. “I was watching the movie.”
“I know that, Madam.” Columbo paused for a few beats. “If he finished reading the book and closed it, merely forgetting to dog-ear it the way you suggested, and then put it on his night table, then he would get up, he would go to his desk, take out his medical report, he would read it, it would depress him, and he shot himself.”
“Poor Henry,” mourned Wheeler.
“You see, if it happened that way, I still have the problem with the gun.”
“The gun?”
“Yes. You remember that I told you that his slippers had no scuff marks on the sole.”
“He might have brought the gun in with him when he came home earlier,” theorized Wheeler.
“Well, then I have another problem.” Columbo picked the book up from his lap and showed it to her. “Did you read this?
“The Transformation of Mrs. Mc Twig,” she read. “No.”
“Mmhmm. You see, if Henry already brought the gun in, if he was already thinking about suicide before he went to bed, then I don’t believe he would be reading this.” He began to describe the plot to her, but she put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“You know, Lieutenant. Lieutenant, you know, you’re so involved with details that maybe I can see something clearer than you.” Wheeler clasped her hands in front of her, just under her chin, as if pleading.
“What is that, Madam?”
“My husband was a revered and distinguished man,” Wheeler told Columbo slowly, looking into his eyes. “Eminent in his profession. Loved at home. Who…” her voice broke, “…Who would want to kill him?”
Columbo looked at her speechlessly, then lowered his gaze.
“Grace?” said Pat. “We’re ready for you.”
“Thank you,” Wheeler said softly. She looked back at Columbo but he remained at a loss for words. “Excuse me,” she said, and got up.
The detectives quietly got up from the couch and walked out into the hall.
“I was watching her carefully while you asked questions,” Kitsuragi murmured to Columbo. “I really don’t think she -”
“Well I do think she killed him, but -”
“But she is either very good at concealing her guilt, or she somehow forgot that she did it. Now, I’ve met somebody who suffered some rather severe memory loss, whether it was the drinking or a small hole in reality -”
“A hole in reality?” Columbo asked.
“I’m not the one to ask about that. But my point is, unlike the alcoholic I worked with previously, Mrs. Willis remembers who she is, where she is, and plans she made prior to the death of her husband. I suppose partial memory loss is much more probable than complete memory loss…” Kitsuragi trailed off for a second and looked inward. “Much, much more probable.”
“Are you talking about -”
“She does have problems with her memory however. So I think we should consider that as a possibility. Because she appears sincere. It almost seemed to me that she had forgotten her husband had died until you brought it up,” theorized Kitsuragi.
“I should check her medical records,” muttered Columbo. “I’ve been wondering about that myself. It may take some work getting access…”
They stepped out onto the street. Kitsuragi’s brow furrowed when he noticed a man sitting in his motor carriage. “Excuse me!” he shouted and walked quickly over to look in the window. He could see now that the man wore an RCM uniform, and that he was from their station. “In the future,” he said crisply, “Do not break into my MC. There are other ways to get in touch with us, Officer.”
“This seemed the most comfortable place to wait,” replied the cop. He was a broad man with a sandy colored mustache and short, graying hair.
Columbo walked over and took a look inside. “Lieutenant Flaherty. Long time no see.”
“Columbo,” greeted Flaherty. “You ought to try coming downtown once in a while.”
Columbo got in the door and sat next to Flaherty.
“One of you move to the back seat,” said Kitsuragi. He wasn’t going to sit in the back seat of his own motor carriage. His colleagues ignored him. He sighed.
“Oh Lieutenant Kitsuragi, this will only take a minute I’m sure,” Columbo reassured through the window, then turned back to Flaherty. “I’m gonna get down there this week.”
“You know a Sergeant Leftkowitz?” asked Flaherty.
Kitsuragi tapped his foot then turned around and leaned his back on his Kineema.
“Sergeant Leftkowitz?” repeated Columbo. “Oh, the lady with the radiocomputer. Yes.”
“You’ve been giving her the run around,” chided Flaherty.
“Me? No. No, I explained to her that my records regarding to my going to pistol practice got loused up in the computer.”
Flaherty gave Columbo a knowing look. “You were right about that. The read-out said you hadn’t fired in five years. She double-checked it. It was ten.” He held out the read-out for Columbo.
“Ten!” echoed Kitsuragi.
Columbo looked at the read-out. “Gee, you gotta be kidding.”
“You better get out to that range right away,” said Flaherty.
“Gee, I can’t go now,” Columbo replied apologetically. “I gotta go someplace.”
“Columbo, you could be suspended,” Flaherty told him sympathetically.
“But I don’t have a gun,” replied Columbo.
Kitsuragi’s mouth tensed and he sighed through his nose.
“Whaddya mean?” asked Flaherty.
“It’s downtown,” Columbo replied.
“You could get busted for that too!” exclaimed Flaherty. “Alright. Make it tomorrow. But make it! You be there,” he warned.
“Absolutely. I’ll be there tomorrow,” Columbo promised.
Flaherty got out of the Kineema, taking the read-out with him. Kitsuragi nodded to Flaherty then got into the driver’s seat. He looked at Columbo.
“Ten years,” Kitsuragi said dryly. “And you don’t have a gun.”
“It’s downtown,” replied Columbo. “And the read-out -”
“Mmhmm.” Kitsuragi didn’t believe him. “Maybe you pawned it, or lost it in the ocean.”
“Now why would I do that?” asked Columbo.
Kitsuragi wordlessly started his motor carriage.
The Forgotten Lady Remix 
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