HARTLAND – The mood in town was somber but nervous Monday, a day after the charred remains of two people were found in the rubble of a home on Vigue Road that burned to the ground on Sunday morning.

“I’m just like everybody else in town,” one neighbor who did not want to be identified said. “I want to know what happened up there.”

The bodies of a man and woman burned beyond recognition were taken Monday morning to the state medical examiner’s office in Augusta for autopsies and identification. Those autopsies, however, were not performed Monday, and staff said they could take place today.

Meanwhile, there has been no positive identification of the remains, although police, town officials, and neighbors in this tight-knit town of 1,800 think the victims are Tim and Linda Spaulding, the home’s owners.

Maine Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland confirmed Monday that no one has seen the couple since the fire was reported about 9 a.m. Sunday morning.

“We are going under the assumption that the bodies are those of Linda Spaulding, 44, and Tim Spaulding, 45,” McCausland said late Monday.

McCausland said the couple had been divorced and then recently reconciled. “However, Tim Spaulding had moved out of the home a week ago,” McCausland said.

“We are hoping the medical examiner’s office can make some sense of these deaths, and I suspect that DNA will be required to make a positive identification,” he added.

The State Fire Marshal’s Office has deemed the fire “suspicious” and said it began in the second-floor living quarters of the home.

“The damage was so severe and the fire so intense that the cause of the fire cannot be pinpointed,” McCausland said. He said vehicles belonging to both Spauldings were found at the home.

The fire burned so hot and fast that little was left of the newly constructed residence. The second floor collapsed onto the first floor and hardly anything in the structure was recognizable. An engine block, some large appliances and rubble was all that was left. A pickup truck parked next to the building was half buried in debris.

Hartland Fire Chief Donny Neal said he had met Tim Spaulding only once, when he inquired about a fire permit, and did not know Linda Spaulding.

At the town office, however, Linda Spaulding was described as “bubbly” by Town Manager Peggy Morgan.

“She was a wonderful person, a wonderful person to talk to. It’s pretty quiet here today,” the town official said.

Morgan said that Linda Spaulding operated a cleaning service that mainly served businesses in the Waterville area. She did not know what Tim Spaulding did for work.

Firefighters from three towns converged on the rural road to the west of Great Moose Lake, just off Route 23, but flames were shooting from the second floor when they arrived, according to McCausland.

The two-story wooden structure contained living quarters on the second floor and a garage on the first floor.

The home was only about two years old, Neal said. It was surrounded by manicured flower gardens and plantings.

Hartland firefighters gathered on Sunday night to debrief after the fatal fire. Neal said everyone stated they were doing fine and turned down offers of assistance.

But Neal also said Hartland’s last fatal fire was on everyone’s minds.

Almost to the day, 22 years ago, five people, including a mother and her three young children, died in an early morning fire on Commercial Street in Hartland.

“You remember that one, don’t you?” Morgan said, referring to September 20, 1984.

According to firefighters that remember the deadly blaze, the occupants of the rear apartment – Carol Lawler, 29, Charles Littlefield, 8, David Littlefield, 5, and Winonia Higgins, 14 – died when the primary exit became blocked by flames and a refrigerator was in front of the second exit. A fifth child, Donald Littlefield, 3, died later at Portland.

The fire was started in an oil-burning stove, and all the victims were trapped in a back bedroom. Fifteen other people were evacuated from the tenement.

The building’s owner, James Corson, was convicted of 12 building code violations and sentenced to 182 days in jail and $2,150 in fines. He was the first landlord to be prosecuted criminally in Maine for reckless conduct regarding his rental property.

Hartland’s most recent fatal fire was in November 2003 when Jason Hewins, 25, died in a mobile home on Moore Street during a fire that likely was started by a countertop deep-fat fryer.