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Notice the choice of the article "the" to describe the undertaker, not "a". I suspect the town only has one undertaker and if there was to be a mortician on the committee then this man would have been "the" man.

It was an undertaker who developed the first switching system for telephones, to do away with the operator having to direct all calls. I think his name was Stowager (sp?) and his competition's wife was a local phone operator and he was convinced she was directing death calls to her husband's business. Necessity is indeed the Mother of Invention!

Ha, just the word "undertaker" used in the article signals the type of town it happened in. He's not only the undertaker and mortician, he's the coroner and medical examiner.

He wasn't there at the crime scene for that reason - he just happened to be in the Bible study group Matthew was supposed to lead that night - they were the ones who went and got a key to the house and let themselves in because they couldn't imagine why he wouldn't show up for his own Bible group that he lead.

Obviously, they did the right thing - but it was just a coincidence that a mortician - *the* coroner - was there.