The house seemed clean enough. A rough jacket by the door, men’s and women’s boots, still wet from the early rain stood by the entrance. A cat cried for attention and a bird in a small cage chirped mindlessly in the alcove in the living room, blissfully unaware of the fate of its owner. The first on the scene, the detective tried to drink in all the details of the room before the townsfolk brought the body in from the elements. In a few short minutes she made a mental picture of the rooms before the door burst open with yelling and jostling. The body was hauled roughly to the middle of the entryway and placed on the ground. A few of the people left again almost as quickly having other work to do, while others lingered around inadvertently touching things. Someone suggested tea to help comfort the mourners and the scene was thoroughly compromised.
The detective looked at the body again. She still couldn’t find any signs of a struggle, injuries, marks or anything that suggested a cause of death. It would be a few days until a proper coroner’s report could be done, being so far off the beaten trail. The medical history of the deceased didn’t suggest anything potentially lethal either.
Still the circumstances the body was found under were very suspicious. It was wrapped carefully in a few layers of blankets, weighted down with stones and dragged most of the way to the pier. The blankets belonged to the victim and the rocks were ones missing from their lawn. Very few in the village woke up early, and those that did were already deep into their work and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
The body was that of a young widow, well liked in the community despite not being very social since the death of her husband. Everyone who was present was questioned thoroughly, but they had either rock solid alibis, no motivation to kill, or no means – and frequently more than one of those disqualifiers together.
It was becoming more of a mystery the deeper one dug into the circumstances, but the detective was sure they were missing something big. She questioned everyone again, this time not about the murder, but about the predeceased husband. His disappearance was also suspicious, but more in that there was never a body found, despite extensive efforts. He was lost at sea, but several people claimed to seen him and his boat on stormy nights for weeks afterwards.
It was an old and superstitious town and ghost stories were part of the local lore, so at first the detective thought little of the tales. A second look at the victims house jogged a memory of the detectives from earlier and sparked a manhunt for the presumed dead husband.
The men’s boots at the door had been a strong hint that the woman wasn’t alone, at least not that morning, and the cheerful disposition of the bird suggested it was someone the bird knew. The non reaction of the townsfolk meant that they recognized the boots as belonging there, but most didn’t notice the extra moisture on them.
Sure enough, a few hours later the supposedly deceased husband was found in the back woods surrounding the town, still in shock at scaring his wife to death and wandering around in a confused stupor, thinking he had been lost at sea and wanting his wife’s body to join him in the deep.
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