They found her lying at the bottom of her cellar stairs, the left side of her head bashed in and her mouth stuffed with ashes. An old black flat-iron lay near by.

I'd awakened and overheard all this lying in my bed in the dawn of a cold autumn morning as my Dad told my mother in a hushed voice so as not to wake me. The image of it stayed with me all these years – a lonely farm house back a tree-lined lane, a dark cellar, a corpse on the cold, bloody floor, ashes in its mouth.

That's all I could remember. I couldn't remember how old I was, or who the victim was, or if the murderer was ever caught...just the cellar, the flat-iron, and the ashes in the mouth.

The thing that fascinated me was the ashes in the mouth. Why?