Bingxin was here as the intern coroner, so I gave her the opportunity to use her knowledge and identify the victim. She studied the bones for a while, and concluded, “The victim was a male of about 35 years of age. He was about 1.7 meters tall. The thick joints of the hand indicate that he was engaged in manual labor all year round. Two of his phalanges are missing. It’s uncertain whether the bones were lost before or after his death.”

She then picked up the fragments of the skull and added, “The cause of death is an impact to the head with a heavy blunt object roughly triangular in size. The width of the object is probably about 50 centimeters. Could it be a hammer? But that’s a weird shape for a hammer…”

I considered it for a while and suggested, “Perhaps a clothes iron?”

“Yes!” Bingxin answered with glee. “A clothes iron! Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Coroners do not need to explicitly identify...