The Windsor Knot

CHAPTER 9

IT WAS PELTING down rain. In the foyer of Old St. Andrews House Adam McIver looked out at the gray sky and hunched his Burberry tighter around him in preparation for the dash outside. He thought the sudden downpour might be his punishment for leaving work a bit early today, but he had a dinner party to go to that evening and he needed the extra time.

“Hello!” said a soft voice from behind him. “Not afraid of getting wet, are you?”

Adam turned around to see the Princess of Wales smiling up at him. He gave her a friendly nod, as he was quite used to seeing her by now. He encountered Princess Dianas nearly every day, shopping for vegetables in the market, queuing up for buses, and waiting tables at the Roxburghe Hotel. Even one of his sister’s flatmates had adopted the look; of course, you had to take into account the fact that the flatmate was an air hostess. Still, it seemed to Adam that every young blonde in the kingdom had adopted that bob-and-fringe hairstyle and the ruffled blouse and Fair Isle wardrobe. This one was a better likeness than most: she had a good straight nose and sensible eye makeup. Adam hated the ones who looked like raccoons.

“I’m not a bit afraid of the rain,” he protested, trying to place her. “But I was a fool to forget my wellies.”

“Well, it is June,” she replied, in a distinct Morningside accent. “You ought to be able to count on good weather some of the time.”

“Oh, you can. Whenever you happen to be in Spain,” Adam replied. He remembered her now. She was the administrative assistant that he had spoken to about getting Dawson’s American fiancée invited to the garden party. “How are arrangements going for the Royal Garden Party?” he asked, to prove that he recognized her.

She made a moue of distaste at being asked to talk shop. “Just as usual. Not many changes, you know, from one year to the next, except perhaps Her Majesty’s outfit, and oddly enough, no one can ever remember what she wore.”

“All the arrangements under way by now, are they?”

“I rang up Black and Edgington in Greenock today. Of course, they always provide the props, you know: chairs, tablecloths, marquees, so they hardly need to be reminded. I’m sure they know the drill better than I do.”

“And will you be making the biscuits?” asked Adam, attempting to be witty.

The response was a wide-eyed stare. “Certainly not! Crawford’s Catering of Leith always does that. There’ll be cream cakes, scones, and small sandwiches. It’s the same every year. The guest list is rather predictable, too. The usual company directors and civil-service types, of course. Scottish Sloanes always go, and those who just missed getting on the honours list are asked as a consolation prize.”

Adam nodded. “I’m Adam McIver,” he told her. “I helped compose the list.”

“Well, it was all right,” the blonde said kindly. “Quite an average list, in fact. At least, I didn’t notice any blunders. I thought it was much the same as last year. I didn’t notice your name on it, though.”

The young bureaucrat reddened. “Well, I hardly thought-that is, nobody told me-”

“Would you like to go? I’m sure I can arrange it. It’s a dreadful bun fight, but you can always go out for tea later, can’t you? The Queen makes most people too nervous to eat anyhow.”

“I would love to go,” said Adam. “It’s very kind of you to offer.”

“No bother. What’s one more face in that great crush? Eight thousand, you know. For tea. It’s a bit late for you to be asked, but I expect I can manage. Especially seeing as you’re one of our lot.” A civil servant, she meant.

“I’m afraid I’ve already made a bit of trouble for you, though. You’ve already had to scrounge that invitation for the Dawsons. He’s an old acquaintance of mine who’s getting married this month, and he wanted to bring the new wife. Did you manage to sort that out?”

She looked stern. “Yes, of course we did. Her Majesty’s guests must be treated with the utmost courtesy. Reasonable requests from them are granted whenever possible.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I can tell you, though, my boss was quite narky about it.”

“I was afraid he would be.” Adam sighed. “But I hadn’t any choice. The guest is an old school friend of mine, and his American bride seems quite set on it. You know how the Yanks are about the royals.”

Princess Diana nodded. “I do indeed!”

Aunt Amanda’s upstairs sitting room had been turned into command headquarters for the duration of the wedding preparations. Notes, price lists, and phone numbers were tacked to a message board propped up on the mantelpiece, and in the center of the chaos of bridal items, Aunt Amanda herself directed operations with the brisk efficiency of a field marshal.

The bride-to-be, looking most unromantic in faded jeans and an Edinburgh T-shirt, was sitting on the chintz sofa with her legs tucked up behind her, leafing through a back issue of Bride’s.

“Let’s just make sure that we have everything straight now,” said Aunt Amanda, peering at Elizabeth over the top of her reading glasses.

Elizabeth put down the magazine and searched through the papers on the coffee table for her own copy of the list marked Wedding-To Do. “All right. I found it.”

“The invitations are addressed and mailed?”

“Check. Some time ago.”

“The minister has been asked.” Amanda put a star beside that item on her list. “I did that by telephone. He said that he would drop by to meet the two of you when Cameron arrives. When is that, by the way?”

“The middle of next week. They’re flying in to Atlanta. Uncle Robert is picking them up.”

“Good. I was afraid you’d want to go along, but it’s out of the question. We have very little time as it is. Let’s see. What’s next. Ah! The caterers have been notified?”

Elizabeth hesitated. “I spoke to Earthling, but is there anyone else we could get to do the reception?”

“Whatever is the matter? Can’t they manage a simple wedding reception?” Aunt Amanda looked stern. “You didn’t ask for haggis, did you?”

Elizabeth explained about Rogan Josh and his politically inspired menu. “I just didn’t think I could cope with him. If I argued with him, I’d feel like a social oppressor and if I didn’t, I’d feel that I’d been bullied by a crank. I don’t know what to do.”

Amanda Chandler’s expression changed from bewilderment to annoyance. “Leave them to me!” Her eyes flashed.

“Gladly. I went to the florist yesterday-the one you recommended.”

“Oh, yes. Lucy in Chandler Grove. I’ve always been pleased with her work. She did the-” Amanda’s voice faltered. “You know, the funerals.”

Elizabeth reddened, babbling on to cover the awkwardness. “We had quite a nice talk. I ended up telling her all about forensic anthropology, and she told me that a florist leads a more interesting life than you’d think. Apparently, the sheriff had consulted her about something that day.”

“You haven’t time to stand about gossiping with shopkeepers. Did you happen to choose the flowers?”

“Oh, she was very helpful. I think I have all the planning taken care of for the decorations. She’s doing baskets of spring flowers for the house-I told her I didn’t care what was in those. I expect she knows best about arrangements. And for the bouquet we compromised.”

“How so?”

“I wanted white roses and white heather, but she says heather is out of the question. She thinks she can get thistles, though. They grow wild in the mountains at this time of year.”

“Be careful how you carry it then,” Amanda advised. “Thistles and roses. That’s a lot of thorns. Aren’t you worried about the symbolism?”

“The thistle is the symbol of Scotland, so I thought I was all right on that score. Besides, you can go crazy if you worry too much about symbolism.”

“Which brings us to something old, something new…”

“I’ll worry about that later!”

“But do you have a sixpence? That’s the last line you know: And a sixpence in her shoe.”

“I’ll call Cameron. They don’t use them anymore, of course, since Britain went off the lovely monetary system they used to have for a boring old decimal system. I expect he can find one, though. What’s next?”

“Flowers for the bridesmaids, boutonniere for the groom and ushers, corsages for the mothers.”

“All done. Cameron is getting one white rosebud and a thistle for his boutonniere.”

“And your attendants?”

“Red roses, white baby’s breath, and thistles, with tartan ribbon.”

Amanda nodded her approval. “That brings us to the wedding gown. I cannot believe that you have left it this late.”

Elizabeth sucked in her stomach. “I was waiting until the last possible pound,” she admitted.

“Well, have you any idea what you want?”

Elizabeth nodded. “I thought I’d buy a pattern and material and have it made. You do have a seamstress around here, don’t you? Because otherwise: malls of Atlanta, here I come.”

“We have a seamstress, if she is not already too busy. This is bride season, you know. Fortunately prom time is past. Her name is Miss Geneva Grey. She and her sister Aurelia used to do quite a bit of fine sewing. Their father was a country doctor here years ago, even before your Uncle Robert went into practice. Old Dr. Grey was one of the founders of the county hospital. His daughters never married. They kept that big old house all by themselves and they do sewing as much to keep busy as for the money. Though I suppose in these days of taxation, everyone could use more money.”

“Probably so,” said Elizabeth, whose thoughts were elsewhere.

“The sisters were very different, though. Geneva was the shy one, but Aurelia had spunk. We were all quite surprised that she should be the first to go. Passed away on a trip to Florida.”

Elizabeth was more concerned with her wedding gown than with local gossip. “But the surviving sister still does sewing?” she persisted.

“Of course. Miss Geneva tries to accommodate everyone who needs sewing done.”

“I’ll call her right now,” Elizabeth promised. “I’ll need to get Jenny in for a fitting, too.”

Before they arrived at the next order of business, the door chimes sounded. “I’ll get it,” said Elizabeth. “It’s probably the UPS truck bringing more wedding presents.”

Aunt Amanda drew aside the curtain and peered down at the driveway. “I don’t think so. There’s a sheriffs car parked on the circle.”

“I’ll go anyway,” said Elizabeth. “I wonder what he wants.”

In Edinburgh it was seven P.M., still broad daylight in this land near the midnight sun, but time for dinner, anyhow. Cameron Dawson and his mother and younger brother were sitting in the small dining room, eating the first course of their meal: homemade cucumber soup. Traveller the cat, while too proud to beg, was lying under the sideboard in readiness, just in case anything should fall from the table.

“No mail today, then?” asked Cameron, tilting his bowl away from him to get the last bit of soup.

“No,” said Margaret Dawson. “Only some bits of advertising.”

“What were you expecting?” asked Ian. “Wedding presents?”

“Actually, I thought we might be due for another postcard,” his brother replied. “That gnome is certainly getting around, isn’t he?”

They glanced out the window at the sunny garden, where a bare patch of earth under a bush was the only trace of the missing garden ornament.

Ian nodded. “He’s been to Alaska, Italy, and Ibiza. There seems to be no pattern to it. I wonder where he’ll turn up next. Hong Kong, perhaps? He seems about due for Asia.”

“Melbourne,” Cameron suggested.

“Have you any idea who is doing this?” asked Margaret. “It seems to me a very odd sort of joke.”

Ian shook his head. “I have asked every lunatic I know,” he said. “Honestly. I even rang up the ones in Aberdeen and Glasgow. They all swear they didn’t do it-but they wish they’d thought of it!”

“Now you’ve done it!” his mother remarked cheerfully. “There’ll be a rash of gnome thefts in Scotland! Anyhow, that’s one set of friends accounted for. What about yours, Cameron?”

“Mine?” cried young Dr. Dawson, with an expression of wounded dignity. “None of my friends would stoop to such a thing. You might as well ask the minister if he did it!”

“Cameron has a point,” said Ian, reaching for the bread. “None of his friends has the nerve to pull it off, much less the imagination. You don’t suppose it was the minister?” he added hopefully.

His mother shook her head. “None of my friends finds it funny. They all think it’s a prelude to a burglary. I must say they have me quite worried about leaving home.”

“Nonsense!” said Cameron. “We’ve enlisted the entire neighborhood to watch the house. It will be perfectly all right to go.”

“It’s a pity we can’t contact the gnome and tell him that we’ll be leaving home shortly,” Margaret Dawson mused. “Suppose he writes us while we’re off in America.”

“Then Dr. Grant will keep the card for us until we get back, just as he’s doing with the rest of the mail,” said Ian reasonably. “Honestly, you act as if it’s a lost dog we’re talking about.”

“Well, it does seem quite alive now that it’s corresponding with us, doesn’t it?” She looked thoughtful. “Although it never says anything personal, does it? It never addresses us by name on the cards, or says anything about seals or estate agents, or anything that would indicate that he knows much about us.”

“It’s hard to eavesdrop when you’re stuck out under a forsythia bush in the garden,” Ian pointed out.

“No, I see what she means,” said Cameron. “We can’t tell from the postcards whether the people who took the gnome are personally acquainted with us or not.”

“I think they must be,” said Margaret Dawson. “But I can’t imagine who it is.”

“A salesman, perhaps?” suggested Ian. “Someone who travels frequently on business? Maybe someone in the North Sea oil industry? An RAF pilot? Do any of us know someone like that?”

They all shook their heads. No one of their acquaintance fit such a description.

“Well,” said Margaret Dawson, collecting the empty soup bowls, “we’re off to America next week. I wonder where our garden gnome will be going next?”

When Elizabeth opened the front door, she found Sheriff Wesley Rountree standing on the porch, wearing his khaki uniform and dress Stetson. He was holding a large blue cloisonné vase.

“Come in!” cried Elizabeth, ushering him into the hall. “It is so nice to see you again, Sheriff. I haven’t seen you since…” She faltered. The mention of one cousin’s murder and another cousin’s guilt would be inappropriate on a social occasion, she thought. “Well, I had no idea you’d remember me after all this time,” she went on happily. “But this is so nice of you. You really shouldn’t have!”

“Uh… well, ma’am… I mean…”

The sheriff seemed at a loss for words, but Elizabeth, who wasn’t, took no notice of his reply. “This is such a lovely vase!” she cried. “I’ll just put it on the table with the rest of the wedding gifts. Really, this is so sweet of you, Sheriff. You shouldn’t have!”

Wesley cleared his throat loudly. “The fact is, ma’am, I didn’t!” he called to her as she hurried away with the vase.

Elizabeth turned in midstride, her smile still plastered in place. “Beg your pardon?”

“About that vase,” said Wesley, who had just remembered to take his hat off. “I apologize for the misunderstanding and I just feel like a hill of beans about it. But what with you being a bride and all, I can certainly understand how you’d come to the conclusion you did.” Wesley had a theory that apologies sounded more sincere in Southern dialect and he always adjusted his accent accordingly.

Elizabeth looked down at the blue vase and then back at the sheriff, still confused about the purpose of the visit.

“It isn’t a wedding present at all,” Wesley explained. “And I’m sure you won’t want it when I tell you what it is.”

Elizabeth contemplated the blue enamel jar, which-she now noticed-had a lid and felt too heavy to be empty. “Oh shit,” she whispered, setting the object on the coffee table.

Wesley looked at her sadly. “I see you figured it out, ma’am.”

“Call me Elizabeth,” she said. “Now sit down here and tell me what you’re doing wandering around Chandler Grove with a funeral urn.”

Wesley settled in on the sofa and explained about Emmet Mason’s encore performance as a traffic fatality, which had naturally led to curiosity on the part of his widow as to just who had been sitting in the middle of her mantelpiece in a blue metal urn for the last five years. “And when I read the announcement about your engagement in the local paper-for which congratulations, by the way-I couldn’t help noticing that you were a forensic anthropologist. So I said to myself, Now there’s the person I need to talk to about this!” Wesley beamed at the clarity of his explanation.

Elizabeth blinked. “You want to consult me on a case?”

“I do. You are the one who’s studying forensic anthropology, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve had some experience analyzing human remains and so on?”

“A couple of years, yes.”

“Then I sure would appreciate it if you could give me some expert opinions here.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Surely the state of Georgia has people who do this.”

“Whole crowds of them, I expect,” said Wesley amiably. “But they don’t hang out around these parts. So if I wanted to consult one of them, I’d have to take a day off from regular duties, which would play hell with the patrol schedules, and the county would probably have to pay them a consulting fee, which I expect I would hear about from the board of commissioners.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Go on.”

“Now I wouldn’t mind the consulting fee if there was a crime involved, but I can’t be sure of that. Why, for all I know that could be pig’s knuckles stuck in that jar. Besides that, going off to hunt up a consultant in Atlanta would take up time, and out of consideration for that poor Mrs. Mason-she’s the widow-I wanted to get some answers to this just as quick as I could. She’s mighty upset, as I’m sure you can understand. So I thought that the fastest and easiest recourse would be to drive over here and ask you two questions.”

“What two questions?”

Wesley’s face took on a solemn expression, which meant that having charmed his way into a free consultation with a medical expert, he was ready to talk business-and to learn something. “Can you tell anything from cremated remains?”

“Yes.”

“What can you tell?”

Elizabeth’s lips twitched in the briefest of smiles. “Is that your second question?”

“No. Rephrasing of the first. Could you elaborate on that first answer, please?”

“Okay. Most people think that the ashes of a cremated person will look like the residue you find in a wood-burning fireplace: fine, papery ash. But that is not the case. Human remains can be made to look that way, if they are milled after the cremation process is complete, but unless the family requests that, it usually isn’t done. The general rule is: if you tell the mortuary that the ashes are going to be scattered, they will be more likely to mill them, but if you plan to just keep the ashes in an urn in a vault, or”-she shrugged-“on a mantelpiece, then they’ll just put them in the container the way they look when they come out of the furnace.”

Wesley grimaced. “Not a pleasant topic of conversation, is it?”

“Not one I expected to be having this week,” admitted the bride-to-be.

“Well, I understand all that you’ve said so far,” said Wesley. “You go right on explaining.”

“If the remains in this urn have been milled, there may not be much I can learn from them. I’d advise you to start hunting up experts with hightech labs in that case, and maybe even they-”

“They didn’t look milled to me,” Wesley remarked. Blushing a little, he added, “I’ve looked.”

“Okay, well, let me see what we’ve got. Could you hand me a newspaper from that basket by the fireplace?”

The sheriff looked startled. “Don’t you want to take this to the hospital or something?”

“No. What for?” Elizabeth smiled. “The evidence isn’t microscopic, Sheriff. I’ll be able to tell you everything I can after a couple of minutes’ examination. And all I have to do is look at it. Of course, there are other tests: cross-sectioning a tooth or-”

“I’ll settle for the general opinion just now,” said Wesley, anticipating another lecture.

“Okay. Let’s just dump it out here on the coffee table. Spread out the newspaper, please.”

Wesley laid out several thicknesses of the Atlanta Constitution on the Chandlers’ marble-topped coffee table. Elizabeth pried the lid loose from the jar and gently sprinkled the contents into a pile in the center of the table.

“Yes,” she said, fingering the mound of charred matter. “This is what unmilled cremated remains looks like. Some ash interspersed with objects that don’t burn at that temperature-bits of bone, tooth, metal tooth fillings, and so on.”

“Are you ready for the second question?” asked Wesley, watching her sort the fragments with a practiced touch.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“Is this a calf or something?”

Elizabeth looked at him. “You kind of wish it were, don’t you?” she said softly. “You’re afraid somebody got murdered to give Mr. Mason a body to stuff in the urn.”

“That had occurred to me,” Wesley admitted.

“You can get a second opinion on all this, of course. Get somebody who already has a Ph.D. and an official lab to confirm what I tell you. You just want to know if it’s worth it to send it off to be analyzed, right?”

The sheriff nodded. “That was my intention. If you told me it was the contents of a pipe smoker’s ashtray, I wouldn’t bother, but if there’s something potentially criminal here, why, I can justify the expense of having it analyzed. Are you saying you can’t tell what I’ve got here?”

“Oh, I can,” said Elizabeth. “But I’d rather not have the responsibility.” She smiled up at him. “In case you have to go to court with this while I’m on my honeymoon.”

Wesley raised his right hand. “On my honor I won’t call you to testify as an expert witness. Now tell me what that stuff is.”

“I’m afraid that it is human remains,” said Elizabeth softly.

Wesley nodded. “I had a hunch it would be.”

She held up a small bonelike bit. “You see that? It’s a human cuspid. Front tooth. And this little bit here is the metal from a filling. Probably a molar.” She rummaged around the sooty pile for a few moments longer. “This is a bit of vertebra and this splintered bit is part of a long bone. See? There’s quite a bit left.”

“I thought of a third question,” said Wesley.

“I expect you have,” murmured Elizabeth, still examining the contents of the urn. “You want to know if I can give you any particulars about who’s in here, don’t you?”

“Is that possible?”

No answer was forthcoming. The sheriff noticed that the young woman beside him had suddenly tensed up, and her expression had shifted from casual interest to one of alertness. “That’s funny,” she muttered to herself.

Wesley peered at the scraps of bone, but he could see nothing to have quickened her interest. There was no flattened bullet in the ashes; nothing spectacular as far as he could see. Elizabeth seemed to be sifting out tiny brackets of metal, of two different sizes, and collecting them in a pile at the edge of the newspaper.

“What did you find?” he asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. “More than you bargained for, Sheriff.”

Charles Chandler was getting desperate. The wedding was just over a week away, and he wasn’t even engaged. He hadn’t even met anybody. The prospects of inheriting his aunt Augusta’s wealth seemed dimmer all the time. Snow White from the Highlander Magazine had not responded to his letter and he was running out of ideas. Where did one meet marriage-minded women? Where would one find a woman who liked physics?

His own prep-school physics teacher had been a bearded gentleman named Fallowfield; otherwise, Charles might have come up with the idea sooner. As it was, he was actually driving past the grounds of the county high school before it occurred to him that science teachers would understand his work. They might even like him. And a multimillion-dollar estate would make a nice change from living on a teacher’s salary.

On impulse, he turned into the school driveway and pulled into the gravel parking lot for faculty. There was no difficulty in finding a parking place; since it was nearly July, the students were no longer attending school, but the number of cars in the lot indicated that the teachers were still on the premises, finishing up paperwork, perhaps, or getting ready for next year’s classes.

The county high school was a nondescript one-story brick building, built in the early Seventies. Charles, who had been sent away to school by his education-conscious parents, had never been on the premises before, but he didn’t suppose that it could be too difficult to find a science teacher in that sprawling maze of corridors. After all, students manage to get from one class to another in five minutes. A sign beside the front doors said VISITORS REPORT TO MAIN OFFICE. Charles followed the arrows down the hall, wondering what he would say when he got there.

The school secretary, a plump, pleasant-looking woman who resembled the mother character in a Forties movie, motioned him over to the office counter with a friendly smile. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” said Charles. “I’m looking for your physics teacher.” He had decided not to explain unless he had to.

“Physics. That would be Mr. Worthington. Go down the hall-”

“Does he also teach chemistry?” asked Charles, who didn’t want to speak to Mr. Anybody.

“That’s right.”

“How about biology?” asked Charles.

“No. That’s Miss Aynsley.”

Charles breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s the one!” Seeing the puzzled look on the secretary’s face, he hastened to add, “I’m a reporter for Scholastic Science.” He beamed at her, pleased with the name of his newly invented magazine. “I’m doing a feature on science in Georgia schools, and I’m speaking to various teachers.”

The secretary looked doubtful.

Everybody’s suspicious of the media these days, thought Charles. “Miss Aynsley has been recommended to us as one of the best teachers,” he said heartily.

The woman’s brow cleared. “Well, that’s all right, then,” she said. “You go down the hall-”

Charles followed her directions, hurrying out of embarrassment and anticipation. He noticed that on the cinderblock wall beside each door, a hand-lettered sign identified the teacher within. He found the MISS AYNSLEY sign in a matter of minutes, and its decoration of frogs and butterflies told him that indeed she did teach biology.

He wondered what he was going to say to her when he found her. Should he pretend to interview her for a nonexistent magazine, just in case she checked with the secretary? He didn’t have time to consider the question any more, because someone was coming toward him, making it awkward for him to be loitering in the hall. Taking a deep breath, Charles strolled into the classroom and said, “I’m looking for Miss Aynsley.”

“Yes, young man? What can I do for you?”

She was a hundred if she was a day. She had been weaned on a pickle. She probably ate the frogs after the class dissected them. Charles stood frozen in his tracks contemplating the most vinegary old martinet he had ever encountered.

“Yes?” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” said Charles. “I came to ask you what phylum earthworms are in, but I have just remembered.”

The same one I’m in, he finished silently, hurrying down the hall toward the exit.

Wesley Rountree couldn’t help thinking how incongruous the setting was. Here they were in a formal Colonial-style living room, with a grand piano and green velvet drapes, and a cream-colored Oriental carpet. Against one wall an oak sideboard held an assortment of silver and crystal ornaments-that must be the wedding-present display, he thought-but here on the marble-topped coffee table was a mound of human remains. He wouldn’t like to have to explain this to the lady of the house. In that event Wesley doubted if he’d get a word in edgewise.

This wasn’t exactly his idea of an expert witness, either: a girl who looked hardly more than a teenager, wearing jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. He had to admit, though, that despite the unusual nature of the surroundings, the information provided had been fast and was confidently given. The sheriff was inclined to trust the opinions offered, but he wasn’t planning to go into detail with anyone about where he had obtained them.

“So these remains are human,” said Wesley, when Elizabeth had given her verdict. “I was afraid of that. What did you mean, though, that I got more than I bargained for? Who is it?”

Elizabeth sighed and shook her head. “The Mormon Tabernacle Choir?” she suggested.

Wesley blinked. “Come again?”

“I mean, there are traces of more than one body in here, Sheriff.”

“What, that little bit of ash is more than one person? It hardly seems like enough.”

“I don’t think you have the ashes of a complete body here,” Elizabeth told him. “You’re right: there aren’t enough ashes to indicate that multiple bodies were put into the urn. But I don’t think this sampling is all of anybody. You have bits and pieces of several. Look here: this is a porcelain tooth from a partial plate, and these are fragments of teeth that are badly decayed, and this is a baby tooth! Also, this big bit of bone here is the epiphysis of a femur, and there is some indication of arthritis, but this bone is from a younger individual. In fact, I’d say this smaller one is from a female.”

Wesley stared at the evidence, trying to make sense of the new information. “Are you sure about this?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Even if I were a complete klutz when it came to bone analysis, nobody could be wrong about one particular bit of evidence here. Look at this.” She held out a handful of metal brackets of two different sizes. “What do you make of that?”

“Can’t place them,” said the sheriff. “Not tooth fillings?”

“They’re staples,” said Elizabeth, grinning triumphantly. “You see, there are two basic kinds of cremation. There’s a deluxe plan, in which the deceased is placed in a pine casket to be incinerated, and then there’s the economy funeral, which uses a container which is more or less… cardboard. Now, these big staples fastened the pine box together and the little ones came from the cardboard casket.”

“So we know that the remains here come from at least two funerals.”

“At least two. Probably more.” Elizabeth looked extremely pleased with herself. “I learned all this from a medical examiner in North Carolina. He came up to the university to talk to us about his cases. One of his strangest tasks was to identify the remains when a funeral home accidentally sent the wrong urns to the families of the deceased and the medical examiner had to sort them out.”

Wesley was still stunned into silence. “This takes some getting used to,” he said at last. “I was prepared for murder, but this-”

“Murder?” Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about murder. Sheriff Rountree. Fraud maybe, but certainly nothing violent.”

“Fraud?”

“Sure. When a body is cremated, not all the ash gets collected and put into an urn. A few stray bits and pieces stay behind in the grate of the incinerator, and after a number of cremations, that grate has to be removed and cleaned out.” She pointed to the pile of ashes on the newspaper. “What I think you have here is-”

Wesley nodded. “Somebody cleaned out the grate and dumped the leftovers into that urn.”

“That’d be my guess,” Elizabeth agreed. “Ship it off to Atlanta to be sure, though.”

“Oh, I will,” Wesley assured her. “First thing tomorrow. So the question now is: where did these remains come from?”

“I can’t help you there.” She picked up the blue enamel vase and examined it carefully. “I take it you’ve looked at this?”

Wesley nodded. “Sure. Fingerprinted it, too.”

“Usually, funeral homes put serial numbers on their urns, and they have number codes so that they can tell which urns are theirs. This one is blank, though. I suppose there are other places one could obtain one. You say it was mailed to the widow from California?”

“She thought so,” grunted Wesley. “Says she never checked the wrapping to find out.”

“Well, that’s understandable. She was in mourning, after all.”

“She’s over it now from the look of her,” the sheriff remarked. “I’d say if that husband of hers staged a third coming, she’d arrange his next departure personally.”

“There’s no chance of that, is there?”

“No. This time I called California myself, and they faxed me a photo of the deceased. This time around it’s official.”

“Wonder what happened last time,” mused Elizabeth.

“Emmet Mason left home, saying he was going to California.” Wesley ticked off the facts one by one on his fingers. “His wife gets a phone call from somebody saying he’s dead. To corroborate this report of his death, she receives a funeral urn, supposedly containing Emmet, but actually filled with-” Wesley made a face.

“Leftovers,” suggested Elizabeth.

“So somebody provided Emmet Mason with a perfect way out. No messy divorce, no recriminations. As far as Chandler Grove, Georgia, is concerned, Emmet is dead. But instead of going to heaven, he went to California.”

“Some people would consider that the other alternative.”

This remark brought Wesley Rountree back to full alert and he decided that he should not be sitting around theorizing with a civilian, expert witness or no. “I want to thank you for your time,” he said solemnly, scooping the evidence back into its container. “You certainly have been helpful.”

“You’re welcome,” said Elizabeth. “And any other time, I’d love to be of any help I could to you in solving this case, but I’m getting married next week. I just don’t have time to get involved.”

Wesley’s eyes twinkled. “I think I can take it from here,” he said gravely.