remains brought to room three, then went to change.
The coffin was smaller than I remembered, measuring less than three feet in length. The left side had rotted, allowing the top to collapse inward. I brushed off loose soil and took photos.
“Need a crowbar?” Lisa stood in the doorway.
Since this was not an LML case, I was to work alone, but I was getting a lot of offers. Apparently I was not the only one fascinated by Elisabeth.
“Please.”
It took less than a minute to remove the cover. The wood was soft and crumbly, and the nails gave easily. I scooped dirt from the interior to reveal a lead liner containing another wood coffin.
“Why are they so little?” asked Lisa.
“This isn’t the original casket. Elisabeth Nicolet was exhumed and reburied around the turn of the century, so they just needed enough space for her bones.”
“Think it’s her?”
I drilled a look at her.
“Let me know if you need anything.”
I continued scooping dirt until I had cleared the lid of the inner casket. It bore no plaque, but was more ornate than the outer, with an elaborately carved border paralleling the hexagonal outside edge. Like the exterior coffin, the one inside had collapsed and filled with dirt.
Lisa returned in twenty minutes.
“I’m free for a while if you need X-rays.”
“Can’t do it because of the lead liner,” I said. “But I’m ready to open the inner casket.”
“No problem.”
Again the wood was soft and the nails slipped right out.
More dirt. I’d removed only two handfuls when I spotted the skull. Yes! Someone was home!
Slowly, the skeleton emerged. The bones were not in anatomical order, but lay parallel to one another, as though tightly bound when placed into the coffin. The arrangement reminded me of archaeological sites I’d excavated early in my career. Before Columbus, some aboriginal groups exposed their dead on scaffolds until the bones were clean, then bundled them for burial. Elisabeth had been packed like this.
I’d loved archaeology. Still did. I regretted doing so little of it, but over the past decade my career had taken a different path. Teaching and forensic casework now occupied all my time. Elisabeth Nicolet was allowing me a brief return to my roots, and I was enjoying the hell out of it.
I removed and arranged the bones, just as I had the day before. They were dry and fragile, but this person was in much better shape than yesterday’s lady from St-Jovite.
My skeletal inventory indicated that only a metatarsal and six phalanges were missing. They did not show up when I screened the soil, but I did locate several incisors and a canine, and replaced them in their sockets.
I followed my regular procedure, filling out a form just as I would for a coroner case. I started with the pelvis. The bones were those of a female. No doubt there. Her pubic symphyses suggested an age of thirty-five to forty- five years. The good sisters would be happy.
In taking long-bone measurements I noted an unusual flattening on the front of the tibia, just below the knee. I checked the metatarsals. They showed arthritis where the toes join the feet. Yahoo! Repeated patterns of movement leave their marks on the skeleton. Elisabeth was supposed to have spent years in prayer on the stone floor of her convent cell. In kneeling, the combination of pressure on the knees and hyperflexion of the toes creates exactly the pattern I was seeing.
I remembered something I’d noticed as I removed a tooth from the screen, and picked up the jaw. Each of the lower central incisors had a small but noticeable groove on the biting edge. I found the uppers. Same grooves. When not praying or writing letters, Elisabeth sewed. Her embroidery still hung in the convent at Lac Memphremagog. Her teeth were notched from years of pulling thread or holding a needle between them. I was loving this.
Then I turned the skull faceup and did a double take. I was standing there, staring at it, when LaManche entered the room.
“So, is this the saint?” he asked.
He came up beside me and looked at the skull.
“
“Yes, the analysis is going well.” I was in my office, speaking with Father Menard. The skull from Memphremagog sat in a cork ring on my worktable. “The bones are remarkably well preserved.”
“Will you be able to confirm that it’s Elisabeth? Elisabeth Nicolet?”
“Father, I wanted to ask you a few more questions.”
“Is there a problem?”
Yes. There may be.
“No, no. I’d just like a little more information.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any official document stating who Elisabeth’s parents were?”
