The Glass Spear (1950) by S.H. Courtier

During the early days of this blog, I posted an uncommonly short review of a fascinating, imaginative and anthropological mystery novel, Death in Dream Time (1959), written by an Australian school teacher and principle, S.H. Courtier – who wrote a colorful, dream-like story by combining a traditional detective plot with Aboriginal folklore. Courtier is hardly remembered today, but curiously, two of his mysteries, Death in Dream Time and Ligny's Lake (1971), were reprinted by Wakefield Press in the 1990s.

After this unexpected, short-lived revival, Courtier drifted back into obscurity alongside with most of his work. Annoyingly, a majority of his detective novels have developed the pesky tendency to be either very rare or a little bit expensive. This is what kept me from returning to Courtier.

So it was slightly frustrating to read a glowing review from John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, who praised Courtier's The Glass Spear (1950) as "an excellent example of an anthropological detective novel" spiced with "a generous amount" of Gothic atmosphere, Australian tribal mysticism and an impossible crime – impressing me as an Arthur W. Upfield novel as perceived by John Dickson Carr. I was finally able to procure a copy and the story truly is "unusual and bewitching."

The Glass Spear fits snugly with the work of other Antipodean mystery writers. The plot has the theatrical touches of Ngaio Marsh with a rich, vividly described Australian background reminiscent of Upfield and the locked room puzzle of Max Afford and Norman Berrow.

The story begins with the recently discharged Major Dick Thewan returning to the cattle and sheep ranch where he grew up as an orphan, named "Klinie Ger," but has not returned to that peculiar household since he enlisted – nearly eight years ago. An urgent letter from a childhood friend had summoned him back.

Jacqueline "Jay" Lensell pleaded him to come home quickly, because he was "wanted badly." When Dick left eight years ago, Herman Carpenty had been "in jail for stealing Kinie Ger sheep," but now he had been made manager of the ranch. The person behind this is easily one of the more memorable "woman of mystery" characters that populate the genre. Huldah is the matriarch of the Klinie Ger and dominates the ranch from those "rooms of hers on the end of the east wing." She never left those rooms. Only two people were ever allowed to pass their threshold, Burton Lensell and Lucy Danes, but to everyone else, Huldah became "a voice on the automatic interroom telephone system."

 

Although Huldah was "invisible, untouchable, unapproachable," she had "a remarkably accurate system of espionage." Huldah was resented by the children and their resentment increased with the year, because they were dying to know why Huldah was in exile or why nobody was allowed to see her – not even her own son, Clifford. An intriguing throwback to the days of Victorian-era sensational novel and the sheep ranch worked surprisingly well as an absorbent for the story's Gothic atmosphere. Courtier wonderfully described the strangeness that had always been a characteristic of the range in this brief, almost Carr-like passage: "Kinie Ger was the kind of house that should have never been silent, never dark. It should always have been lighted brightly, pervaded with cheerful noise, so that there was no space for the intuitive fear that dwelt in the long, carpeted passages and empty rooms." I honestly would not be surprised if The Glass Spear had inspired Upfield to write his own Gothic-style mystery novel (Venom House, 1952).

Anyway, this unusual household is populated with exactly the right characters. There's the previously mentioned Burton, an anthropologist, reluctant sheepman and "bewildered guardian to a set of children." All of whom were orphans, except for Clifford, who might as well have been one. Burton has a private museum that would have been at home in a S.S. van Dine or Clyde B. Clason detective novel. A private museum housed in a room as big as a lounge where the walls are hung with aboriginal weapons: spears, throwing sticks, boomerangs, waddies, stone knives and stoneheaded axes. The tables were given to ornaments, a ceremonial dress and various implements, while the bookcases were crammed with volumes of anthropological textbooks, but a key piece of the collection is "a fine set of kurdaitcha shoes" – believed by the Aboriginals "to render the wearer invisible." And prints of the kurdaitcha shoes are discovered before and after the murders!

Lucy Danes is in charge of running the household and the only other person allowed to see Huldah. Steve Danes grew up with Dick on the ranch and had been a prisoner-of-war in Burma, which left their marks on his personality. Oscar Flegner, the station bookkeeper, whose legs were crippled by polio and devoted to Lucy in a shy, reversed fashion. Lastly, there's the convenient presence of Superintendent Ambrose Mahon, Criminal Investigation Branch, who's an old friend of the family and is reluctantly placed in charge when the murder begins.

During an Easter carnival, Burton is staging an Aboriginal corroboree, a ceremonial ritual with costumes, masks and dancing, which is staged on a sacred island. The ceremony ends with a spear being driven down a mound of sand, but the spear struck something and the crumbling mound revealed the featured of Herman Carpentry through the sand. A great scene anticipating the Morris Sword Dance murder from Marsh's Off With His Head (1957).

The second murder is equally well staged: one of the people is locked inside the private museum, but is unresponsive and every entrance is locked or bolted from the inside. Dick even went out onto the veranda and checked the museum window, but, when he returned to the corridor, everyone was starring down at the bottom of the door – where a dark-red stain was ominously widening over the yellow carpet. Unfortunately, the locked room was only an atom of the whole plot and Mahon solved it immediately.

Going into the book, I had hoped the locked room-trick would hinge on one, or more, of the items from the collection. This is really is a shame, because a stronger impossible crime would have made it an interesting title for John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, to reprint. The Glass Spear deserves to be reprinted. The locked room is disappointing, but this is the only smudge on this fascinating detective novel with an excellently handled plot.

The solution to the murders is, unsurprisingly, tightly intertwined with the Huldah's secret and her reclusive existence is one of the best built and sustained story-lines in a detective story, ever. A high-light of this plot-thread when Mahon and Dick are allowed to speak with Huldah in her private-rooms, but this long-anticipated meeting only deepened the mysteries surrounding her. This was so very well done and the resolution to the Huldah story-line most definitely delivered. I also like how Mahone gleaned the solution from watching the blacks doing "a death sing" in honor of one of the victims.

John rightly observed in his own review that The Glass Spear is a detective novel that can only have taken place Down Under.

  

The Glass Spear is an engrossing detective novel with a well-imagined background and memorable characters that succeeded admirably in being original within a very traditional framework. So you get the best of both! Hopefully, Courtier will one day find his way back into print. Going by Death in Dream Time and The Glass Spear, he deserves it.