It was nice, it would only have been nicer if the two main characters of aunt Ruth and Janie were a little less boring, but it was quite nice anyway. The only problem was that Ruth talked too much, at least with Colombo, and Janie… she was plain and not well acted.
The Lytton family consists of Ruth, the quiet old fashioned one, Edwards who thinks about money and Phyllis, who was always the beautiful one and always got what she wanted, even if it was Ruth’s fiancée. Because there was a time when Ruth was happy and in love, until Phyllis eloped with him, married him. Janie should have been her daughter, and the fact is, both Ruth and Janie wish it. Janie is much closer to her aunt than her mother. Then the man died of a heart attack some eight years later, more or less, I think Janie was seven. And the sisters were left together with their brother to care for their museum. They own the Lytton museum, with ancient and valuable pieces and yet the museum is losing money, and Edward think they might be forced to close it, and if he can convince Phyllis then there’s nothing Ruth can do… so she kills him. With a plot to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.
Since Janie had a lover, Tim, she hired his brother as the new security guard. This Sheffer was not a trustworthy man, he had a gambling problem, and Ruth is sure he was even stealing from them. Instead of turning him in, she tells him they could helpmeach other: the museum has money problems, so if he were to steal some things, they would get the insurance for it and get the items back too, and she would give him money and a passport with a new name to disappear, making it look like he died so nobody would go looking for him. So: first of all he makes a phone call to his brother’s answering machine, when it looks like someone shot him while on the phone. Then, much later, he goes to the museum and steals the objects Ruth had told him to take, plus one he wanted to steal for real, so he put everything in a bag but that single one in his pocket. Then Ruth comes in saying she can’t meet him at the agreed place so she brought here his passport. She tells him to put the bag in the phone booth, because she wanted to make it look like he died while on the phone. Then she shot him. Edward was doing the inventory in another room, heard the noise and came in; when he saw her he asked what she was doing there at two in the morning and she shot him as well, with Sheffer’s gun. She puts Sheffer’s gun in his hand, and her gun in Edward’s hand, than she goes to the phone and lets the receiver down. She takes a last look around, switches the lights off and goes home.
In the morning, Colombo is first called by Tim, worried about his brother. Nobody knows where Sheffer is, so he starts investigating and of course asks the Lyttons. Then later, Ruth and Janie go to the museum, and Ruth lets Janie go in first, and when she comes back after having found the bodies, it’s one of the worst scenes ever. Terrible, really.
The idea was that the two men had shot each other, but Colombo sees that Sheffer had all new clothes, and was recently vaccinated, like he wanted to go abroad. Then the light, of course, if they were both dead, who switched it off? She did it by habit, but it was a big mistake. So, he keeps investigating. Then Ruth takes another piece from the museum and puts it in Janie’s room, and makes a speech on how something went missing two weeks prior and they suspected Janie but did nothing about it, so the police search the house, find it and arrest her. Then Colombo goes to talk to Janie in her cell, bringing her food and cigarettes, his usual tactics to distract her from what he really wants, and sure enough she thinks nothing of the yellow square thing he puts down for her, and uses it as an ashtray without a second thought. So he lets her go, and go to her house. Colombo insinuated that Ruth may have killed Janie’s father, and Ruth insists he tell her it was a lie, which he does, and then she says she’ll confess… not really sure why.
It was not a very well thought out plan, because what if his brother had answered right away? It was still quite early, it would have caused trouble to the rest of the plan. And why did the man put the bag in the phone booth? She told him to for her own reason, but why did he do it? Did he think nothing of it? Didn’t he find it strange at all?
Also, why did Rith confess? There was no proof against her, right? And if she loved Janie so much, why did she have her arrested? It doesn’t make much sense…
That Ruth was so good with a gun and that the two men died after a single shot was something that happened often in old stories, quite often. Only after movies like Die Hard and the like we get used to people being shot and stabbed and whatnot and still running and climbing and fighting and winning too.
That Janie had no idea what that piece of gold was maybe is not a plot hole, since they all look surprised as well, but it’s still strange, since it looks like she helped her uncle from time to time. It certainly seemed so when Edward complained after Ruth told her she could go out to meet Tim, and Edward clearly said he wanted her to help with the inventory. Did she never do it before? Or she always did it without taking a look, only writing what he told her to? It makes no sense since Edward did not write at all, he used a recorder, so for her to help him she had to know what she was looking at.
So, yeah, not their best story, no.
Ruth… Joyce Van Patten
Phyllis… Celeste Holm
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