Goofs

When Miss Lyton is talking to her niece in her bedroom, her niece puts on a robe with her hair tucked in the back, and she closes the robe around her. In the next shot, her hair is no longer tucked into the robe, and the robe is open.

The cigar that Columbo has in his mouth while inspecting the body in the phone booth is rather short, maybe an inch or two long. After he says "no sergeant, that is not an insect bite", the camera angle changes, and the cigar is much longer. The scene then switches to an outside shot of Columbo standing up, and the cigar is now in his hand without him having removed it from his mouth.

When Ruth Lytton speaks to her brother in her office, she puts on her glasses twice.

Though Ruth Lytton is portrayed sympathetically as a wronged woman, she's actually as close to a pure sociopath as any Columbo killer. Assuming she killed her brother-in-law/ex-fiance (and Columbo was being nice saying he lied about it at the end), not only was her body count three over a period of years, including two family members, but she tried to frame her niece, who's the only one who showed her any love in the entire story, on top of it.

When Columbo talks to Ruth in the museum, he is filmed, from behind and from the front, drinking tea. The shots from behind show him moving his right hand and scratching his face, whereas the shots from the front show him holding a cup of tea.

Camomile tea does not help allergies. It is a relaxant and good for stomach upset. The proper herbal tea for allergy symptoms is echinacea.

Even though Columbo's hair is cut by Daryl, later on it is the same length as is was before the haircut.

However, Darryl must have cut just a bit at Columbo's request, the main difference in his look being the extensive combing.

Determining that the date of death was after midnight because the victim had changed the day on the watch is silly. He could have changed it before midnight arrived for any number of reasons.

On the contrary, it was very clever from Columbo as the clerk who sold the watch explicitly said that the victim was willing to change it on the proper day; he knew he would be awake (getting ready for the robbery) "just after midnight", hence the note to himself.

The cup of "tea" that Ruth hands Columbo is obviously empty. There is a rear shot of Columbo tilting the cup back to "drink", and the entire inside of the cup can be seen to be empty and dry.

In talking with Darryl the hairdresser, actor Peter Falk mixes his character's name and occupation together to say that he's from "Hom-bo-side".

After the bodies are discovered at the museum, and Columbo makes his observation (about an item found in the overcoat pocket when there is still plenty of room in the briefcase), the police photographer tells Columbo (referring to the items taken from the victim's pockets), "We need a shot of these articles." However, the actor clearly mouths a word closer to "artifacts", not "articles."

Supposedly, the burglar is shot by the accountant, who is shot in return. Columbo listens to the inventory tape many times but listens to the answering machine tape only once. If the two men shot each other at nearly the same time, the answering machine (fake) message would have two gunshots to account for the dual deaths. It had only one. Columbo failed to pick up on this, even if only to consider simultaneous gunfire.

Although the taped inventory mentioned the gold belt buckle which Ms. Lytton stole to implicate Janie, the first gunshot would have been recorded on the cassette as the inventory was being made. There was no mention of this.

Sargent Miller and colleagues did not check for finger prints when they found the artifact in Janie's room.

When Janie discovered the bodies in the museum, she obviously would have turned on the lights as she walked into the room. At that point, she was frightened and ran away to tell Ruth. But when the cops show up, the lights in the room are off. It wouldn't have made sense for Janie--or anyone else--to turn the lights off before the cops came.

Ruth's plan has a big hole: she tells Shaeffer to pretend his death on the phone at 9 p.m. and shoots him at 2 a.m. This considerable difference would be evident by reading the coroner's report, where the time of death is stated. But not for Columbo - by chance he notices that the date on Shaeffer's watch is already the first of the month (May 1), whilst his own shows 31. From a jeweler he learns, the date must be set manually from 31 to 1, if a month has 30 days. Therefore, he concludes that Shaeffer wasn't killed at 9 p.m., but after midnight, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to set his watch one day forth at midnight.

The police photographer uses a flash to take pictures of the artifacts behind a glass case.

Sargent Miller followed Columbo's instructions to the letter not touching anything at the murder's scene but failed to take prints when he found the artifact in Janie's room.

When Columbo and his sergeants examine the dead body in the phone booth, Columbo refers to one of the sergeants as "Carter", but when he later talks to Ruth Lytton in the same room, Columbo refers to the same sergeant as "Sergeant Shaw". Sergeant Carter/Shaw is played by Mike Lally.

The way Janie flips the page of her paperback book, she was not reading it.