Scene of the Crime (20 page)

I never saw a case of spontaneous human combustion. But many people with no apparent reason to lie insist they have seen it. And I can't help remembering that for many hundreds of years scientists insisted stones could not fall from the sky, while common people went right on seeing meteors turn into meteorites.

I doubt I'll ever want to use spontaneous human combustion in my fiction; I couldn't get away with it. But on the other hand, I couldn't get away with having my villain eaten by the Loch Ness Monster's cousin, although it was a perfect denouement when Gladys Mitchell did it. So if you want to use spontaneous human combustion, be my guest. I'm not going to say it doesn't happen. Just be sure you're writing a book in which you can get away with that kinky an idea.

Postmortem Lividity

Postmortem lividity confuses people who have never before seen a corpse except at a funeral, after it has been cleaned up. Briefly, this is what it means.

At the time of death, the blood, which has been flowing, ceases to flow. Slowly, it pools in the lowermost parts of the body, causing them gradually to assume a deep purplish-red color (or, in the case of carbon monoxide poisoning, a cherry-red color). However, portions of the lowermost part of the body that are under great pressure may at the same time bleach out, so that white creases are visible in the midst of the purplish-red color. A novice, seeing these marks, is likely to assume they are the result of severe bruising. But they are not; they are entirely normal. (And my thanks here go to Detective Billy Johnson, who explained this to me in great detail the first time I saw it.)

This lividity may begin to appear as early as twenty minutes after death or as late as four hours; it is usually complete within about twelve hours. Thus, it is a rather poor indicator of time of death. But it has other uses.

If, when the body is found, the postmortem lividity is consistent with the present body position, it means nothing, except that its degree should be noted, as it may help later a little bit in determining how long the body has been dead. But there is another little peculiarity: postmortem lividity occurs and then does not change. This means that if the body has been in one position for several hours, and then is moved, the lividity will indicate the original position, not the new one. This may be of great help in determining where and in what position the body originally fell or was placed.

Rigor Mortis

And what about rigor mortis—the extreme stiffness which follows death, such that it may take several strong people to change the position of the body? It is
not
true that the medical examiner—or the experienced officer—can glance at the body, assess the extent of rigor mortis, and determine at once how long the body has been dead. You've already heard of cadaveric spasm, which seems to be — or perhaps is—instant rigor mortis. But other things affect timing. I've seen the body of a previously vigorous and healthy man who'd scarcely begun rigor mortis after eighteen hours; I've seen total rigor mortis in the body of an emaciated crib-death baby who'd definitely been alive two hours before I saw her.

Normally rigor mortis begins within two to six hours and is complete within another two to six hours. "Rigidity ... begins to develop in the muscles of the face, jaw, upper extremities, trunk and lower extremities, appearing in about the sequence mentioned ..." (Gonzales 56). Prior to rigor mortis, some muscles relax; typically the jaw drops open. However, the eyes normally remain open. (Among other things, this means that the only time an expression on the face of the corpse would be readable —if then—would be in the case of cadaveric spasm, as the muscular relaxation that characteristically precedes rigor mortis would smooth out even the most horrified of expressions. Why do I mention this? Reread
The Hound of the Baskervilles
for the horrified expression on the corpse of the last of the Baskervilles. Yes, I did it, too, in
Too Sane a Murder,
and you are welcome to continue to describe the expression on the corpse. Just be aware it wouldn't really be there.)

Rigor mortis normally lasts, after becoming complete, for about twenty-four to forty-eight hours, leaving in the same order in which it began. In general, rigor mortis in a physically strong person will begin faster and last longer than rigor mortis in a weak or emaciated person, which begins later and lasts a much shorter time. In a hot location as opposed to one with a moderate temperature, rigor mortis begins faster and ends faster; in a very cold location, rigor mortis begins faster but ends far more slowly, and at times it may be impossible to distinguish between rigor mortis and frozen remains.

Body Temperature

Body temperature may not be a very good indicator of time of death. Even under normal conditions, loss of body heat is not a constant,

but rather a function of such things as the body temperature at the time of death, the ambient air temperature, and the weight of the body and the person's normal health before death. It may be greatly affected by lying in the sun, lying in a cold room, or by the cause of death; in fact, in the case of violent, painful death—especially prolonged painful death—the core body temperature may continue to rise for up to an hour after death.

In an unattended death in which the body is found intact and fairly promptly, if the first technician who arrives puts an anal thermometer in the body and puts a room thermometer in the room, checking both after half an hour, some indication of time of death may be derived — except that if the death is at all suspicious, the use of the anal thermometer would disturb the crime scene, causing more problems than a possible body temperature might solve. An oral thermometer in this situation is quite useless, as the mouth temperature after death does not reflect the core body temperature, whereas an anal temperature at least might. I've been told that in some jurisdictions, the medical examiner's investigators will make a small puncture in the abdomen and insert the thermometer there. Although that would certainly provide a correct core body temperature, it seems to me that it could also confuse later investigation. I would not do it myself. But you decide what your investigators do — or check with your coroner's office or medical examiner's office to find out what is really done in your jurisdiction.

Motion May Continue

In some situations, it seems that the nerves remain responsive to the last message sent by the brain long after the person is actually dead. Gonzales tells of a man whose myocardium (part of the heart muscle) continued to beat, although the rest of the heart did not, when the body was actually well into rigor mortis. I personally saw a man whose lungs continued to work for half an hour after his brain was blasted out of his skull by a shotgun. Very early in this century,

a few sadistic officers in the army of the Shah of Iran would,

for their own amusement, bet on how far a standing condemned man could run after having been beheaded by sword.

One by one the victims had their heads lopped off as they

started to run. Some of them ran for considerable distances.

(Kevorkian 57)

Your guess is as good as mine on what "considerable distances" means in this context.

Bodily Processes After Death

But eventually—normally in seconds, sometimes in minutes or more, the body becomes still. The blood clots and then, in some cases, reliquifies, to the extent that at various times of major crisis both the Soviet and the German armies were practicing blood transfusion from cadavers. Postmortem lividity begins; rigor mortis begins. Gradually, over the next few hours, days and weeks, the body begins to succumb to bacteria. The body tissues and blood vessels, as well as body cavities, begin to fill with gas, which causes the entire body to distend. Decay may cause the body to turn any or all of red, green, brown and black. (Folklore says that a white person will tend to turn black in decay and a black person will tend to turn white in decay. I have never seen anything—either in cases I worked or in reference books I have read—to support such a legend, and I do not believe it.) The eyes appear to bulge, the tongue begins to protrude through the swollen lips, and the penis may appear to be erect.

Blood may begin to be pushed out of the nose, stomach contents from the mouth and fecal material from the anus. This pressure may cause a postmortem expulsion of the fetus from

the pregnant uterus----The gas formation in the blood vessels

may force fluid, air or liquid fat between the epidermis and the dermis [the upper and lower skin layers] to produce a large blister which may rupture. The skin epithelium and the hair and nails may be easily separated from the dermis by disintegration at the roots. When the nutrient material is used up, the formation of gas ceases and the swelling gradually subsides; the gas leaves the tissues, usually by escaping as a result of damage to the structure or by drainage through a postmortem wound.

(Gonzales 63)

It is important to know these signs of decomposition, because some of them can easily be mistaken for the signs of a death by

strangulation, in which the eyes bulge, the tongue protrudes through swollen lips, the penis is typically erect, and the nose may bleed. However, in strangulation the neck may be compressed, the hyoid bone and the thyroid and cricoid cartilages are normally crushed. During a postmortem examination, neck bruises may be visible on the dermis (the inner layer of skin) even if they were not visible on the epidermis (the outer layer of skin).

Of course, heat and humidity tend to speed the process of decomposition, whereas cold and dryness tend to retard it—almost permanently, if extreme cold or dryness continues.

The Ice Man and the Bog Man

Climbers in Switzerland in late summer of 1991 spotted the body of another climber, lodged inside a crack in a glacier. They went back down the mountain and notified officials, and soon the mountain was swarming with rescue workers—who were about four thousand years too late.

Sometime around the year 2800
b.c.e
., the man set off across the ice, wearing boots stuffed with straw, trousers, and a lined jacket, carrying all he was likely to need, including a stone knife. Somehow, he slipped and fell into a crevasse. When he was found, his body appeared to have been freeze-dried. Even his eye color was preserved; with his intact clothing and intact tool kit, he was, exultant scientists proclaimed, probably the greatest treasure-trove of neolithic knowledge ever found, and the two countries across whose boundary the glacier lay at once began arguing about which he belonged to.

Crime scene? Probably not—and yet, what was he doing crossing that glacier alone? Did he have companions? Did they try to get help? Did they realize he was dead and reluctantly leave him? Or—did they push him in and keep going?

When peatcutters found a body in a bog in Denmark, they knew they had a murder; the dark-haired man—probably in his mid-forties—still wore around his neck the willow wand with which he had been strangled. But law-enforcement officials were about two thousand years too late for either him or the fourteen-year-old blond girl buried a few feet away from him.

Investigation—archaeological, not criminal—finally suggested he had been strangled as a sacrifice to the goddess Nertha; the girl-judging from the way her hair had been cut away from one side of her head-might have been executed for adultery. But—why were the two bodies so close together? Had she committed adultery with the intended sacrifice, the intended husband of Nertha?

There's no knowing, now. What is known is that some substances—oak water, bog water, and oddly enough, arsenic-preserve a body about as well as, and sometimes better than, freezing does. (In fact, for many years arsenic was a common component of embalming fluid. Imagine trying to prove arsenic poisoning after exhuming one of
those
bodies!)

Moral: Don't commit your murders with arsenic, and watch where you conceal the body, if you want the body to decay quickly.

Bodies Under Water

Humidity is one thing; water is another. Bodies under water begin to decay in an extremely odd way. The fatty tissues of the body begin to react with the water to develop a waxy substance, yellowish-white in color, called
adipocere,
a form of insoluble soap. Gonzales says adipocere "has a rancid odor, floats in water, and dissolves in ether and alcohol." Adipocere eventually replaces the muscles and viscera, as well as the fatty tissues around the face; as it is very light, it is larger in bulk than the tissues it replaces, and the body, especially the face, may take on an extremely grotesque, irregular, bloated appearance.

Adipocere formation may become

complete in adult bodies in from a year to a year and a half, and in full-term newborn infants in from about six to seven weeks; it does not occur in a fetus of less than seven months' gestation because the composition of the fat at this stage is not suitable for its development.

(Gonzales 68)

When a body in which much of the tissues have been replaced with adipocere is removed from the water, it is extremely light in weight. The stench is beyond words, far worse than the normal smell of a decaying body (which is bad enough — and as unforgettable as