“How did you find this?” Moriah asked.
“When we got the vines cleared away a bit, I saw there were some large, flat stones that formed the floor. I thought they might be useful to make a bit of a patio outside the back door of the cottage, but when I pulled them up, there were ashes beneath.”
“Ashes?”
“We thought that was odd, but we went ahead and moved all the floor stones, anyway. While we were scuffling around, carrying them out of here, we noticed that there were bones beneath the ashes. It’s a very shallow grave. That’s when Jack got me a clean paint brush and I started brushing the dirt and ash away from it.”
“How are things going?” Katherine called.
Nicolas was walking behind her, carrying a large basket. “We brought a picnic. Katherine thought it might be nice to come out, see how things are progressing, and relax a bit…what are you three looking at?”
“The question isn’t what we’re looking at, it is who we are looking at,” Ben said. “Apparently, someone buried a body here.”
“Seriously?” Nicolas handed the basket to Katherine. “Let me take a look.”
Ben, Jack, and Moriah stood aside so the doctor could see what they had discovered.
Nicolas crouched beside the skeleton and brushed away more dirt, revealing that the person had been buried in a heavy, ragged, woolen coat. The pants, which were thinner, had rotted away, revealing long underwear laced with holes. He also wore disintegrating leather boots.
Nicolas stood up. “Male, about 6 feet tall. Looks like maybe size twelve shoes.”
Bending over, he brushed away more dirt from what would have been the face. As the dirt fell away from the skull, it was possible to see the teeth. A glint of gold captured their attention.
“Is that a gold tooth?” Katherine asked.
Nicolas flicked away more loose dirt. “It certainly is.”
“Liam Robertson had a gold tooth,” Katherine said.
“Your great-grandfather?” Nicolas asked. “The one who went missing?”
“Yes. My grandfather told me that his father, Zachary Robertson, had once mentioned that his father, Liam, had a gold tooth. It was rare to have one in these parts back then. He got it somewhere overseas while serving in the Navy.”
“The state of the skeleton and clothing could be from that far back,” Nicolas said.
“That’s what I thought,” Ben said.
“Look at this.” Nicolas picked up the skull and turned it so everyone could see a large, ragged, hole in the back of it. “I know I’m an obstetrician with no forensic training, but if this is Liam Robertson, I think there’s a strong chance that he didn’t just disappear into the woods. This looks like blunt head trauma.”
“I’m going to go call the police,” Moriah said. “Even if the body is over a hundred years old. I don’t know what else to do.”
“I believe I’ve just lost my appetite for ham sandwiches,” Katherine said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Why the ashes, I wonder,” Ben said, after Moriah and Katherine left to go back to the lodge to make a phone call.
“You’ve never spent a winter this far north, have you?” Nicolas said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Then you don’t know that a death in the middle of winter causes all sorts of complications, even today,” Nicolas said. “Back then, many families had to keep their deceased frozen in a shed until spring, when the ground warmed up enough to dig a proper grave. Sometimes, if for some reason they were truly desperate to bury a body, they would create a huge bonfire and keep it going to help things along by thawing out the ground beneath. In the middle of the winter, when Liam was supposed to have disappeared, it would have taken a large bonfire to make it possible to dig even a shallow grave. Instead of six feet, this one is what, maybe a foot deep? It was probably all they could manage during a hard winter. Even today, the undertaker has to keep the body of the deceased in cold storage until the ground thaws enough to dig a grave.”
“But do you really think it might have been murder?” Ben said.
“I don’t have enough training in that area to know for sure,” Nicolas said. “But if it was an accident, like a bad fall, then who buried him? Only his wife and son were with him. Who else would be around to do that in the middle of winter? And why would Eliza Robertson tell the authorities that her husband had disappeared if she already knew he had died from some sort of accident?”
“Do you suppose someone else might have killed and buried him without her knowing?”
“I don’t think she could have missed seeing a giant bonfire.” Nicolas said.
“So, you think Eliza might have killed her husband, buried the body, and pretended that he disappeared?” Jack asked.
“If this is Liam, it’s possible.” Nicolas said. “The story I remember Kathy’s father telling me was that Liam and Eliza had been cooped up all winter, alone with their child. The nearest thing to civilization was something like eleven miles away. Cabin fever can do strange things to human minds. People under those kinds of circumstances have been killed for not much more than looking at someone the wrong way.”
It took the Manitoulin policeman about twenty minutes to get there. Word spread fast, and the crew soon put down their tools and came to see what was going on. Some of the older people, who loved to watch the progress on the lighthouse, also came to take a look.
“Murder or not, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it now,” the young policeman said.
“I have a friend who teaches forensics in Toronto,” Nicolas said. “Can you help make arrangements to have what’s left of the body taken to him?”
“We can do that.” The officer nodded, pleased to have a direction. Murder was rare on Manitoulin, but he knew the protocol just in case. He hadn’t been sure what to do in a case like this and was happy to follow Nicolas’s suggestion.