Just reaching the first freezing temperatures of the year, and going back to town to finish a quest, and I find one of the townspeople lying dead in one of the 1x1 water tiles I've been calling wells. There's ice starting to form on the shore tiles, so I can only assume he broke through the ice on the well and drowned. On the other hand, I was completing the forest maiden quest, and he was the villager the quest-giver referred me to as having had a recent run-in, so maybe he was chasing a forest spirit?