Spontaneous Combustion
"Spontaneous Combustion" is a mystery story by Arthur B. Reeve featuring scientific detective Craig Kennedy and his companion Walter Jameson. Kennedy and Jameson are preparing for a weekend trip to Atlantic City when a desperate telegram arrives from Tom Langley, an old university classmate. Tom's foster uncle, wealthy club man Lewis Langley, has been found dead at Camp Hangout, an Adirondacks estate, under deeply disturbing circumstances. The upper portions of his body, including his head and chest, have been burned to ash, while his legs and arms remain untouched. The surrounding furniture shows no fire damage, though the room is coated in oily soot. A charred cigar butt lies on the floor near his body. Kennedy and Jameson abandon their holiday and travel to the camp, where they find a family group gathered under a cloud of mutual suspicion. Present are Lewis's brother James Langley, James's son Junior, Lewis's niece Isabelle, distant relative Harrington Brown, and the family physician Doctor Putnam. Tom and his sister Grace, though adopted by Lewis and treated as his own children, stand to lose everything if a will cannot be found, as blood relatives would inherit under intestacy laws. The will, which had been held securely in a New York safe, has mysteriously disappeared. Adding pressure, a New York newspaper publishes a sensational account attributing the death to spontaneous human combustion, a phenomenon of disputed scientific validity. The story relieves some of the family tension by offering a seemingly natural explanation, but Tom privately suspects murder. Kennedy proceeds methodically. He examines the room in early morning light, scraping minute samples from a small round spot on the hardwood floor near where the body was found. He borrows test tubes from Saranac, arranges for a groom to catch live rabbits, and inoculates one rabbit with his own blood while leaving the other as a control animal. He also quietly collects the hunting jackets worn by all the male guests on the night of the death, washing small samples from each into individually sealed and numbered glasses, the names of their owners known only to Jameson from a private record. Kennedy then gathers the entire family group in the library and systematically dismantles the spontaneous combustion theory, demonstrating with a gin-soaked sponge that alcohol burns off while leaving organic material virtually unharmed, and explaining that the high water content of the human body makes spontaneous ignition physiologically impossible. He argues the phenomenon has historically been exploited to disguise murder. He then applies the Uhlenhuth precipitin test, a forensic technique recently used in English courts, to determine whether the floor spot is human blood. Adding serum from the inoculated rabbit to a dissolved sample of the scraping produces a telltale white precipitate, conclusively identifying the spot as human blood. Kennedy further argues that the position, size, and thickness of the spot indicate the victim was struck and fell close to the floor rather than from standing height, and that traces of wiped blood spots trace a path from the fireplace toward the room's door. He then applies the same test to the coat washings. Four of the five glasses show no reaction. The fourth glass produces the white precipitate, identifying human blood on one hunting jacket. Jameson reads the recorded name: James Langley. James Langley, deeply in debt and dependent on Lewis for financial support that Lewis had refused to extend, confesses the quarrel and the motive. He attempts to shoot himself with an automatic pistol but fails to release the safety. He breaks free, runs upstairs, and begins burning the missing will in his fireplace. Kennedy tackles him before destruction is complete, and enough of the document survives to be admitted to probate, preserving Tom and Grace's inheritance.
By Arthur B. Reeve · First published 1910 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction