Two murdered but well-preserved bodies are found after a shed is torn down, and it's discovered that one of them had fought in the War of 1812.
Tropes:
- From Bad to Worse: In a sense, as they keep finding more and more evidence that the victims are older than expected, which keeps ruling out people who owned the property at different times.
- Innocent Inaccurate: Helped along by some Lies to Children. Murdoch determines that five-year-old Horace was the one who swapped the Blakes' laudanam with cyanide and caused their deaths, believing that he was replacing their usual "happy potion" with a "magic disappearing potion." Since Charlie and Rebecca buried the corpses in secret and told the other children the Blakes had gone away, it took him years to realize what had actually happened, and Inspector Brackenreid concludes that he can't very well prosecute someone for misunderstanding something like that at such a young age.
- Interrogation Flashback: A pair of mummified corpses turn up at a construction site and Murdoch repeatedly interviews several now-elderly people, including the daughter of the couple who once owned the land and their three indentured child servants. Later interviews prompt sepia-toned flashbacks in Murdoch's attempt to reconstruct events from decades earlier.
- Lies to Children: When Horace overheard Charlie and Rebecca planning their Suicide Pact, they reassured him by telling him the cyanide they planned to take was a magic potion that would cause them to disappear so they could escape the Blakes' household.
- Suicide Pact: The solution ultimately involves a decades old suicide pact (although neither of the participants actually died).
