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.
