Half the investigations worth running begin with a death certificate that is wrong in one line: drowning, for a man found dry in his own bed; a heart attack, and an autopsy nobody may read; a body released before anyone asked.
One A4 page laid out like the certified copy an office hands over the counter: the issuing authority, the record and certificate numbers, the deceased with their age, birth, occupation, marital status and last residence, the date, hour and place of death, the immediate and the underlying cause, the physician or coroner who certified it, the informant, the place of burial or cremation, the attestation, a box for remarks, and the registrar’s signature. Click any line to rename its printed title or take it off the form, and drag the seal wherever the clerk would have pressed it.
Five styles: a 1920s county copy typed into a printed blank under a raised seal, an Eastern Bloc abridged extract with a violet stamp, a modern certificate on guilloche security paper, a fantasy temple’s book of the departed under red wax, and a space colony’s registry extract with a hologram. The notice the family put in the paper is a Press Clipping, and the picture the police took of the room is a Photograph.