The bronze statue resting on a table in a studio in Soulard seemed to be that of a troubled man.

"I hope so," said sculptor Harry Weber. "I hope we got some melancholy in his face. Murdered or not, he was not a happy guy."

The face is that of Meriwether Lewis, who along with William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition on its journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back in the early 19th century. The sculpture will be unveiled next week during a ceremony in Hohenwald, Tenn., to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the explorer's death.

It will be the third major piece Weber has done on the expedition or its leaders. "Late May 1805" is a collection of life-size figures from the expedition and is located in the Drury Plaza Hotel downtown. "Captains Return" is located on the riverfront and depicts the triumphant return of Lewis and Clark to St. Louis. The dog Seaman is also in the piece.

Those first two pieces were for history buffs. This new one might be for mystery fans. Does the melancholy look indicate a man who would kill himself?

Lewis' death has long been a subject of debate. He was 35 when he died at Grinder's Stand Inn along the dangerous Natchez Trace. He was on his way to visit President Thomas Jefferson. Lewis was buried immediately and with no fanfare. Initial reports suggested suicide.

But there were questions. For one thing, Lewis was shot twice, once in the head and once in the abdomen or chest. The shooting was at night, and he lived until the next morning. That seemed like a strange description of a suicide.

In 1843, a Tennessee state commission concluded that Lewis had been murdered. By then, conspiracy theorists were pointing the finger at James Wilkinson, who was in charge of the West Tennessee Territory at the time of Lewis' death. Wilkinson had been the governor of the Louisiana Territory until Jefferson replaced him with Lewis. Also, Wilkinson had been close to Aaron Burr, who had been accused of wanting to seize the Louisiana Territory and form a new country.

Yes, there was plenty of fodder for conspiracy buffs.

In fact, the stories and theories have never stopped. The latest entry in the literary mix is co-authored by a St. Louis historian, Thomas Danisi. In "Meriwether Lewis," Danisi and John Jackson have suggested that a painful bout of malaria may have led Lewis to intentionally shoot himself and accidentally kill himself. That might sound bizarre, but Danisi and Jackson argue that in the days before basic analgesics like aspirin, pain could literally drive a person crazy. Might a sufferer try to shoot the pain?

In a comment on this newspaper's Book Blog in June, Danisi wrote, "All too often people want a convincing argument for Lewis's demise. It has been our intention not to convince but to offer a plausible conclusion to the explorer's death. We can only hope that our research acts like a permanent wedge, and separates fact from theory."

There may soon be more separation of fact from theory.

In 1996, a coroner's jury in Tennessee concluded that an exhumation should be carried out to investigate the explorer's death. The National Park Service refused to grant a permit. That decision was later reversed, and then reinstated. This June, the government again indicated that the proposed exhumation would be in the public interest.

Incidentally, the explorer's family — the descendants of his nieces and nephews — have long been on the side of an exhumation in the hope that an examination of the body might determine if suicide is even a possibility. (That might sound like a tall order even for somebody like Joe Burgoon, the legendary detective who does cold case work for St. Louis County, but then again, the location and angle of the entry wounds could eliminate suicide as the cause of death.)

Perhaps the commemoration ceremony next Wednesday will provide an impetus for the exhumation.

What does Weber think? He likes to talk about getting inside his subjects. Has he been preparing the bust of a murder victim, or a malaria sufferer who accidentally killed himself, or a man who finally succumbed to depression?

We were standing in the Soulard studio of Weber's long-time associate and fellow sculptor Vlad Zhitomirsky. For this bust, as for many of his other works, Weber did the original bust in clay and Zhitomirsky did the molds and then the welding. Weber took a long look at the face he had carved.

"I think he was like the high school football star whose best days were behind him," Weber said.