•
Early on the morning of December 1st 1948, a man was found dead on Somerton Beach in the Adelaide suburb of Glenelg. He was in a seated position, on the sand, leaning against the sea wall, his feet towards the sea. He wore a brown suit, with a pullover under his jacket, a white shirt and a wide-striped tie. His shoes were near-new and polished, his hair neatly combed and his fingernails trimmed and clean. Upon inspection by local police, it was discovered that all the labels on his clothing had been removed.
Some witnesses reported that the man seemed calm and composed; others assumed he was drunk. A fellow called John Lyons was taking an evening walk with his wife and saw the man raise his arm as if stretching—extending it up and down again in an elegant fashion. No one spoke to this man, and he spoke to no one. And it wasn’t until early the following morning—on December 1st—that people realised he was dead. John Lyons was walking past again, and he was the one who noticed something was amiss. Lyons, and two men with a horse, all up early for a beachside stroll.
The police had no idea who the dead man was, or what to make of him. A post-mortem examination was performed and the results were inconclusive. Pathologists at the time felt certain that a poison had been administered, but no poison could be found. The body of the man was pumped with formaldehyde in order to preserve it, while everyone wondered what to do.
It wasn’t long before an unclaimed suitcase was discovered in the cloakroom of Adelaide railway station. It had been checked in on the day the unknown man had travelled to Somerton Beach. Threads in the suitcase linked it to the unknown man, and authorities concluded it was his. But even though some items of clothing in the suitcase bore the names T. Keane, Keane or just Kean, police suspected the names were a deliberate plant, a misdirection, and, since they couldn’t find anyone missing by the name of T. Keane anyway, it didn’t lead to an identification.
Evidence was examined and re-examined and an inquest was held in June 1949, at which various pathologists testified. Rare, deadly poisons were discussed, and theories posited, but the inquest could not determine either the cause of death or the man’s identity. Authorities described it as an ‘unparalleled mystery’.
It was around the time of the inquest that, upon reexamination, detectives found a rolled-up scrap of paper hidden in the fob pocket of the dead man’s trousers. The paper looked to be torn from a book, and it had the words ‘Tamam Shud’ printed on it. What did that mean? The police had no idea, so they appealed to the public for information: did anyone in Adelaide or beyond know what ‘Tamam Shud’ meant?
Well, a man called Frank Kennedy knew. He was a police reporter from the Adelaide Advertiser and he recognised the phrase as Persian. He contacted police immediately and told them to look into a book of poetry called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, written by a twelfth-century Persian astronomer. ‘Tamam Shud’ meant ‘it’s ended’ or ‘finished’ and it appeared at the back of some editions of the book.
Police conducted a nationwide search to find a copy that had the phrase in it, and a photograph of the torn piece of paper was released to the media.
It was then that a local man came forward, a man who was never identified, but he was described as a professional of some kind. Some reports refer to him as a ‘doctor’ or a ‘chemist’, and on the day the man had died this doctor/ chemist had parked his car on Jetty Road in Glenelg and left the windows rolled down. The doctor/chemist had been with his brother that day, and when he noticed a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam on the back seat of his car, he assumed it belonged to his brother. His brother assumed the same. Neither thought anything more about it until months later, when the book was suddenly a vital clue. The doctor/ chemist handed it over to the police. Sure enough, at the back of book, a section had been neatly torn out. It was the same size as the scrap of paper found in the dead man’s pocket bearing the words ‘Tamam Shud’. Tests proved the paper to be one and the same.
But that wasn’t everything.
Written there too, in capital letters, was what police believed to be some sort of cipher:
WRGOABABD
MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB
That’s what was written, in black pen, with a few lines and cross marks here and there. And some letters were difficult to make out. Was the first letter a W? Or was it in fact an M? Was the cross mark a cross, or the letter X? No one could ever figure it out. Navy codebreakers worked for weeks in vain. An Adelaide newspaper offered a reward to anyone who could figure it out. Letters were received from across Australia, offering solutions and theories. Thirty years later, when defence department cryptographers took another look, they speculated that the letters might be little more than the meaningless product of a ‘disturbed mind’.
Police made similarly little progress with the other thing found written in the back of the book: the unlisted telephone number for a woman who police referred to by the nickname ‘Jestyn’. Jestyn, a nurse, lived in Glenelg, about four hundred metres from where the unknown man was found. When police interviewed her, she claimed not to know the man. She said she had no idea why her number was written in the back of the book. But as coincidence would have it, she did admit that, while working at North Shore Hospital in Sydney in 1945, she just happened to give an army lieutenant named Alf Boxall a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Alfred Boxall.
He’d had a couple of drinks with this nurse, Jestyn, at a hotel bar and she gave him a book of Persian poetry. She left Sydney shortly after and married, and when Alf tried to contact her again she declined his advances. Then, three and a half years later, in 1948, a man shows up dead on Somerton Beach—walking distance from Jestyn’s house—linked to the same book of Persian poems. What were the odds? This was what the police wondered, and they quickly concluded that the dead man must be Alf Boxall.
But he wasn’t.
Police found Alf Boxall, alive and well, living in Sydney. He still had his copy of The Rubaiyat, too. It was signed in the front, to him from Jestyn, and she’d copied out one of the poems in her own writing on the title page. When police checked the back of the book, the words ‘Tamam Shud’ were still intact. Alf Boxall had no idea anyone thought he was a dead man until the police came knocking on his door.
So that left the unknown man from Somerton Beach—with the mysterious piece of paper in his pocket, the lack of identification, the unknown cause of death, the suitcase at the railway station, and the book of poetry and codes.
A taxidermist made a plaster cast of his head and chest, in the hope that it would one day lead someone to an answer. The body was eventually buried, and when flowers began to appear on his gravesite years later, police at the cemetery questioned an elderly woman who seemed to be paying particular attention to the grave—but she too claimed not to know him.
So the years passed, and the spy-related theories continued to abound. Laypeople sat in their living rooms, hunched over notepads, perplexed by the code. Newspapers reported every new and significant development. Adelaide police received letters from enthusiasts across the country, postulating about espionage and the potential involvement of the KGB. And, funnily enough, Alf Boxall himself had worked as an intelligence officer during World War II. He was questioned about this in ’78, and about the theory that the Somerton Man was some kind of spy, but Alf Boxall played it down.
‘It’s quite a melodramatic thesis, isn’t it?’ he said in 1978—and now, in the Cedar Valley police station in 1993, Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons cracked up laughing.
‘Ha ha ha. Isn’t it, though?’ said Simmons, as he read from a faxed transcript of the interview, provided by Hall’s mate from Norwood.
‘He’s still alive, you know,’ said Hall.
‘Who, Alf?’
‘Correct. My mate in Norwood has been into the case for years. Not officially, more as a personal hobby. I told him he should write a book about it. He’s read all the articles, all
the files. He’s got a VHS copy of the interview from Inside Story. He grew up in Glenelg and his parents were well into it too. He says Boxall must be eighty-five by now, but he’s still kicking.’
Simmons set down the fax paper and clasped his hands behind his head.
‘What an absolute cracker,’ said Gussy Franklin, peeling a banana. ‘What do you make of it, boss?’
‘Madness!’ said Simmons, beaming. ‘Fucking madness.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Hall. ‘I mean, our guy obviously had a thing for the Somerton Man, yeah? Would you say it’s like a copycat case?’
Franklin took a too-big bite of banana and struggled to keep his lips closed while he chewed it. He made a little mmm sound at the word ‘copycat’, which was either surprise or choking.
‘Well, we’ve got our connection,’ said Simmons. ‘Even just his outfit says it all now, doesn’t it? The labels and the suit and so forth?’
‘It’s a shame there’s no cloakroom at Clarke station for him to have left a suitcase full of clues for us,’ said Hall.
Franklin swallowed and cleared his throat. ‘Why would you copycat this, though?’ he asked. ‘And why would you copycat it here?’
Simmons’s eyebrows went up. He nodded. ‘This nurse back in Adelaide—Jestyn?—she’s clearly bullshitting. She knew him! She obviously gave him the poetry book, as well as giving one to Alf Boxall. Either that or it’s the biggest fucking coincidence in Australian history, and you know what I think about coincidences. Is she still kicking too?’
‘Still kicking,’ said Hall. ‘And my mate says everyone who’s worked on it reckons she’s bullshitting. To this day, she bullshits.’
‘So our old dead mate in Adelaide, he was in love with her. Are you thinking this? Or else she’s a spy too. Or she’s a spy and he’s in love with her. And she’s killed him somehow. You with me?’
Franklin was chewing again, a confused look in his eyes.
‘Should I call my mate in Adelaide and tell him you’ve solved the unparalleled mystery?’ said Hall.
‘You might just have to do that, Jimmy,’ said Simmons.
Franklin took yet more banana into his mouth, as if this was even possible.
‘So you reckon the nurse killed him because she didn’t fancy him,’ said Constable James Hall. ‘And she had access to the special poison because she’s a spy.’
‘Plausible!’ said Simmons, enjoying himself. ‘And now maybe our guy—our dead ’un—maybe he has a nurse. So to speak. A “Jestyn” of his very own in Cedar Valley.’
‘Who’s killed him?’ asked Franklin. ‘But wait: how does he get someone to kill him so it looks like the Somerton Man? Does he just ask nicely?’
‘Fuck, I don’t know!’ said Simmons. ‘How’s your banana?’
Constable James Hall grinned, and a little twinkle came into Gussy Franklin’s eyes.
‘Does it have to be a nurse again?’ he said.
Simmons slapped the desk, hooting with laughter. ‘Yes, Gussy. It has to be a nurse who works for ASIO on the side,’ he said. ‘Or wait—the Russians! We’re talking about the Russians, aren’t we? Ha ha ha.’ Simmons really was having a wonderful time. He pushed his chair back and put one leg up on the desk—plonk. ‘Seriously, though, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Your thoughts?’
Constable James Hall stopped smiling and applied a look of concentration. ‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘Of all the towns in Australia I guess he must’ve had a reason to sit down in this one.’
Simmons stared at Hall, nodding, as a thought came to him.
‘We should probably check—’ Hall began.
‘We should check his fob pocket,’ said Simmons.
38
Cora Franks was sitting with Therese Johnson at the counter of Cedar Valley Curios & Old Wares when Benny Miller, wearing a Royal Tavern T-shirt, stopped outside the big old antique store and looked in the window.
‘That’s her,’ said Therese, who was perched on a stool facing the street with a cup of tea in her hands.
‘Who?’ said Cora, looking up from the little television.
‘The new girl Tom has working at the Royal,’ said Therese, as Benny entered the shop and began inspecting a dresser covered with crockery and decorative plates.
‘Well, hello there,’ said Cora loudly.
‘Hi,’ said Benny, giving a small wave, then she wandered around the front of the shop—inspecting a ceramic phrenology head and picking up a vase—while Therese looked her up and down, and was clearly displeased with what she saw.
•
Benny Miller’s desire to visit Curios had arisen earlier that afternoon. So far she had seen it only through the window—on the night the man had died, and when she had walked up Valley Road and seen the closed sign hanging inside the door.
Even from the street though, she’d got a good sense of its charm. It was unlike the musty, claustrophobic places that Frank Miller had dragged her to, wedged so tightly with furniture that some heavy item would always have to be moved in order for some other item to be looked at. Curios looked spacious and quite lovely—and the dead man had been sitting up against its wide window, which Benny had certainly found interesting.
But given what Odette had said earlier that afternoon, that interest had become an acute fascination. That a man in Adelaide had died in the same fashion? And that her mother, Vivian Moon, had been intrigued by the case? How was it possible that Benny Miller had arrived in Cedar Valley in search of information about her mother on the very same day that a man had died in the same strange manner as some person from the 1940s? An unsolved mystery that had perplexed Vivian Moon?
Tom Boyd had offered some economical comments: ‘It’s just a bit ridiculous.’
And Odette had said, ‘I love ridiculous! You know, Benny, I think Vivian sent me a letter about it. I remember her talking about it when we first met. And then it came up again when she was travelling, and she sent me this long letter with all the details. I’m going to dig it out. And I might just have to call Elsie Simmons.’
Benny had tingled with excitement. ‘Can you tell me everything?’ she said, more eagerly than she had intended.
‘I’ll tell you everything, honey,’ Odette said, and just the sentence itself had felt like a gift to Benny Miller, standing behind the bar in her new T-shirt, her cheeks sore from smiling.
Later, she finished her shift and walked down Valley Road to Curios to look again at that spot where the dead man had sat slumped against the glass, and to thank Cora Franks for the photograph of her mother. She wondered if Cora might have a lot more to say.
But then here was this other woman sitting at the counter too, her red-dyed hair perched atop her head like a hat.
Benny smiled as she walked past Cora and the woman.
‘How are you, Benny?’ asked Cora.
‘Good, thank you,’ said Benny. ‘Thank you for the banana bread. It’s delicious.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Cora, and she winked at Benny. A wink, of all gauche things, and neither Benny nor Cora herself was quite sure why. Benny went along to the back of the shop, attracted by the fluoro cardboard signs of the book section. She crouched down in front of the bookshelves and looked through Fiction, where, among many other titles, there were three copies of The Power of One. Then she pretended to look through Misc. which was mainly Readers Digests and books about craft.
But really she was wondering if the other woman might leave soon, so she could mention the photograph to Cora, and see what Cora might say. Cora seemed like a person who liked to divulge. Had she known Vivian well? Were they friends? And, on a different matter altogether, what about the man who had sat down and died on the footpath? Benny wanted to ask all these things, but she felt that she couldn’t with the other woman sitting there too.
Benny flipped through a book about wildflowers. She could hear the sound of a soap opera coming from the television up behind the counter. Cora and the women were drinking tea and watching it.
&
nbsp; Eventually Benny put the book back and wandered back past the counter, giving Cora a quick nod.
‘See you again,’ said Cora, and the other woman wasn’t even civil enough to smile.
•
‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ went Therese, as Benny Miller left the store.
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Cora Franks.
‘She’s Vivian Moon’s daughter,’ said Therese, as if being Vivian Moon’s daughter was the same as being a deviant criminal.
‘I know,’ said Cora to Therese, who really was in a particularly bad mood, even for Therese.
‘Why are you baking Vivian Moon’s daughter banana bread?’ ‘Because she’s staying next door in Odette Fisher’s cottage,’ said Cora. ‘And I’m very neighbourly.’
Therese laughed at that, and Cora allowed herself to laugh too.
‘Oh, I don’t know—she looks like a lost puppy,’ said Cora. ‘You heard that Vivian died?’
‘Yes I did, and I won’t be crying for her,’ said Therese. ‘The way she went about when she lived here, waving her tits around? Please. And how about the way she treated you? Come on, Cora.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Cora, biting into a biscuit.
‘Just because Freddy’s so upstanding and you don’t have to worry about those kinds of women,’ Therese said.
‘I thought Ed took you to the Riverside and showed you a good time?’ Cora said. ‘You said it had all been in your head.’ Cora rippled with discomfort, and an abrupt image appeared in her mind: Ed Johnson thrusting away at Chicken Linda, her face like a beetroot.
‘Yes, well,’ said Therese. ‘It better be all in my head.’
Then Therese looked so sad for a moment that Cora almost reached out to touch her. Cora wanted, just in that moment, to touch her cheek, to brush it with her thumb like she used to do with her own son when he was crying. But Therese was so prone to turning awful that the feeling of tenderness deserted Cora as quickly as it had arrived.
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