Page 156 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Slow Burn

I wrote as fast as I could, happy not to have to get any closer to
the mess on the floor.
“The single window in the room is locked tightly, and the kitchen
door, when closed, appears to create an effective seal. The stove vent
fan is not turned on. All these conditions point to the following
scenario: deceased entered this room unaware that he was in any
danger. He began drinking, or had already been drinking, when he
started cooking his Sunday dinner. We can verify that he had a
history of alcohol consumption. At some point, in a drunken stupor,
the victim set himself on fire, most likely by spilling alcohol on his
shirt, then falling against the stove burner as he was passing out.
Thus the overturned saucepan.”
It was hard to keep up with her. As a delaying tactic I asked,
“Wouldn’t the pain have snapped him back into consciousness?”
“In most cases, yes. But we are dealing, in the classic cases of
spontaneous combustion, with a concatenation of unlikely factors—
as in the failure of redundant safety systems in nuclear reactor
containment vessels. It shouldn’t happen very often, but when it does
the results are spectacular. The next improbable but not impossible
condition is the slow but steady exhaustion of oxygen in the room,
made possible by the tightly-closed door and window and the
unvented stove. The fire, once started on the victim’s abdomen,
smolders for hours until there is not enough air to sustain it. That
explains the now-extinguished stove burner, which contributed, in
turn, to consuming the available oxygen. The victim would not regain
consciousness during the early stages of this process; perhaps he
sustained a blow to the head when falling. Enough of the skull
remains to make this possibility worth investigating.”
I dutifully noted this, thankful I was not a coroner. I took out my
handkerchief and tied it around my nose and mouth. Labelle walked
around the body, if you could call it that, looking at it from various
angles.
“We will undoubtedly discover that the victim was grossly
overweight. Such a person has ample subcutaneous fat to fuel a slow-
burning fire for hours, particularly if ignition begins in the midsection
and spreads outward toward the head and limbs. The reddish-brown
oily soot covering the inside of this room attests to the slow but
steady oxidation of human tissue; we do not observe the residue of

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