The burning of Mary Dalton’s body is Bigger’s attempt to turn a killing he fears will expose him into a secret the household cannot discover. Dalton’s furnace seems to offer the safest means of concealment, but it does not make the evidence disappear cleanly: the body will not fit at first, and a blood-stained scrap of newspaper remains in the basement the next morning. The episode’s central reversal is material. Bigger’s plan depends on objects behaving as he needs them to, yet the trunk, furnace, fire, and newspaper each impose their own limits.

Decision and Preparation

Bigger has already carried Mary’s trunk down to the basement. The weight strains him, the strap cuts into his palm, and he has to stop when the trunk strikes the floor. Instead of resting, he turns to Dalton’s furnace and decides to use it to destroy the body. He opens the door, then opens the trunk and lifts Mary out. The change of plan is driven by fear and the immediate problem of concealment: he believes the fire offers a safer solution than leaving her in the trunk.

The decision begins as an effort to use the furnace as a disposal place, but the body does not go in as a single, easily hidden object. Bigger pushes it feet first because that is the end nearest him. The clothes catch fire, yet the body will not move far enough inside; its shoulders remain outside the furnace. The failed attempt makes the furnace’s physical limits decisive. What looked like a way to erase evidence instead leaves the body exposed and forces Bigger to devise another method.

The Plan Changes

A white cat enters the basement through the open kitchen door while Bigger is struggling with the furnace. Its appearance intensifies his fear of being discovered, and he briefly considers killing it as well. The cat escapes upstairs. Bigger closes the door, but the interruption has already underlined the vulnerability of his plan: the basement is not sealed off from the household, and an unnoticed opening can bring a witness into the space.

Bigger then uses his knife and a stack of old newspapers in an effort to make the body fit. The newspaper serves as a practical barrier beneath Mary’s head, intended to keep blood from reaching the floor. When the knife proves inadequate to the task, he finds a hatchet and completes the separation needed to push the body farther into the furnace. The account presents these actions as desperate adjustments rather than a controlled procedure: each tool is taken up because the previous attempt has failed, and Bigger pauses before continuing. He wraps the head in newspaper, uses the wad to push the rest of the body into the furnace, and places the head and hatchet inside as well.

Firing the Furnace and Leaving

Bigger checks the time: it is four o’clock, and he estimates that no one will come down before ten in the morning. He wipes his knife with another piece of paper, puts the paper into the furnace, and keeps the knife in his pocket. He then pulls the furnace lever, sending coal down the chute and making the fire burn more strongly. Once the body is covered with coal, he pushes the lever back. The sequence is an attempt not only to burn the body but to control what will be visible afterward.

He shuts the trunk and pushes it into a corner, intending to take it to the station in the morning. He looks around for anything else that might betray him, sees nothing, and leaves by the back door. The car remains in the driveway. His departure therefore does not complete the concealment: the trunk, the car, and the furnace remain where they are, while the plan depends on the fire doing what he expects before anyone checks the basement.

The Surviving Trace and Later Consequences

The next morning, after Peggy has left the basement, Bigger searches the room for signs that anything is amiss. He notices a small piece of blood-stained newspaper in the light from the furnace and wonders whether Peggy saw it. He concludes that she did not, switches off the light to examine the scrap, and opens the furnace to look inside. There is no visible body, although the coals suggest to him the outline of what he has tried to burn. The scrap slips from his fingers into the furnace, where it blackens and vanishes. Its accidental survival, followed by its destruction, gives the episode a second stage: even after the main concealment, Bigger must watch for a remnant that could expose him.

The body’s destruction does not remove the consequences of Mary’s death. At the inquest, Bessie’s body is presented as evidence against Bigger, and he recognizes that the proceedings make her death serve the case over Mary while giving less weight to the killing of a Black woman. He understands that the city’s response is directed chiefly at Mary’s death and that Bessie is being used to intensify the demand to punish him. The furnace episode thus begins as an attempt to hide a crime but cannot contain its later social and legal meanings: the evidence is reassembled publicly, while the unequal treatment of the two dead women shapes how their deaths are made to count.