Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

sure his body was not on his side of the fence. You made him walk to the place where you shot him, and then you saw the calf and the other cattle in the distance, and you shot the calf and carried it to the fire.

‘I have enough to put you in the dock, Larkin – and one other little thing which is going to make certain you’ll hang. Reynolds was in the Army during the war. He was discharged following a head wound. The surgeon who operated on Reynolds was a specialist in trepanning. The surgeon always scratched his initials on the silver plate he inserted into the skull of a patient. He has it on record that he operated on William Reynolds, and he will swear that the plate came from the head of William Reynolds, and will also swear that the plate could not have been detached from Reynolds’ head without great violence.’

‘It wasn’t in the ashes,’ gasped Larkin, and then realized his slip.

‘No, it wasn’t in the ashes, Larkin,’ Bony agreed. ‘You see, when you shot him at close quarters, probably through the forehead, the expanding bullet took away a portion of the poor fellow’s head – and the trepanning plate. I found the plate lodged in a sandalwood tree growing about thirty feet from where you burned the body.’

Larkin glared across the table at Bony, his eyes freezing as he realized that the trap had indeed sprung on him. Bony was again smiling. He said, as though comfortingly, ‘Don’t fret, Larkin. If you had not made all those silly mistakes, you would have made others equally fatal. Strangely enough, the act of homicide always throws a man off balance. If it were not so, I would find life rather boring.’

A. E. MARTIN

The 1930s and 1940s were times of great opportunity for Australian writers. Magazines and newspapers published original fiction, publishers clamoured to sign new names, particularly in the mystery field, and for those capable of mastering the exacting art of scriptwriting, radio beckoned with almost non-stop work.

One of the more interesting talents of the time was Archibald Edward Martin. Born in Adelaide in 1885, Martin worked in a variety of fields including boxing promoter, showman, theatrical press agent for such groups as J.C. Williamson, film importer, travel agent, and sometimes journalist. In this latter role, he assisted C.J. Dennis in the establishment of the satirical weekly journal, The Gadfly.

In 1912 he travelled to Europe, signing acts for a variety circus that toured Australia the following year. The people he met in this endeavour, and throughout the next few decades in the theatre world, provided the basis for many of his future stories.

In 1942 he won the ?1,000 first prize in a literary competition organised by The Australian Women’s Weekly. The novel, Common People, was published by Consolidated Press in 1944. With a circus background, this mystery had as its central character, a personable spruiker and con-man by the name of Pel Pelham.

Pelham made a return in a later Martin mystery, The Chinese Bed Mysteries (London, Max Reinhardt, 1955), which also used a circus backdrop. Among his many superior thrillers is the notable Sinners Never Die (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1944).

Martin’s short fiction was widely published in Australia and in such celebrated overseas publications as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. Three Martin stories also appeared in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. ‘The Power of the Leaf, ‘The Scarecrow Murders’ and ‘The Flying Corpse.’ The last, another with a circus background, won third prize in the magazine’s 1947 International Mystery Competition. He adapted Sinners Never Die and Death in the Limelight (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1946) into radio plays, and went on to write a number of 52 episode serials for producer George Edwards.

Martin died in 1955, soon after the publication of The Chinese Bed Mysteries. His last novel, The Hive of Glass, was completed by his son, Jim Martin. Interestingly, Martin’s last novel, just like his first, won a competition organised by an Australian publisher. It was released by Rigby in 1963.

The Power of the Leaf undoubtedly ranks among Martin’s finest stories. After it appeared in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine it was included in an anthology, The Queen’s Awards (London, Gollancz, 1950).

The Power of the Leaf

In the year 1847 Ooloo of the Narranyeri, busy with his boomerangs and wresting by violence a living from territory where, as yet, no man had planted seed, was delighted when the headman put the message stick in his hand and sent him on a peaceable mission to the neighbouring Munamulla tribe. He took no arms with him but his boomerang and the throwing-stick carved for him by his young son, now grievously dead, and pointed with a barb made from a spike taken from a sting ray.

Ooloo was old now and greyer than he had been a month ago when his son had been brought to him tossing his head, frothing at the mouth, and flailing his arms. It was all too evident, as the medicine man had said, that someone had pointed a stick at Young Oo-omal – a stick with several sharp, twisted prongs – and that the stick had entered the lad’s body attached to an invisible string upon which some unseen enemy had pulled and thus brought about the painful quivering.

The medicine man had watched his patient for an hour, crouching before the writhing form, and then, leaping abruptly, had succeeded in seizing and cutting the unseen string. Shuddering and moaning himself, he had sucked the place of pain, extracting for all to see broken pieces of the barbed stick. Gradually, Oo-omal’s convulsions had subsided and it was plain to everyone that he had no more agony – plainest of all to his stricken father who knew he was dead.

As he tramped through the bush, his eye wary lest he be attacked before he could produce his symbol of peace, Ooloo thought much of the unknown enemy who had struck down his son. The medicine man had been vague. The lad would have lived, he asserted, had he been brought to him a few moments earlier. The enemy? One of great power, living at a distance. He waved in a general direction and promised he would keep an eye open.

All this Ooloo had found unsatisfactory. Resting beneath a giant gum in the territory of the Munamullas, he meditated deeply, permitting himself the luxury of a thought that astonished and then intrigued him. Perhaps the medicine man was not as powerful as he pretended. He began to wonder. Whence did these men derive their authority? From dreams, they said, but, after all, one had only their word for what they dreamed.

It would be very nice, Ooloo thought, to possess the influence of a medicine man and live easily at others’ expense.

***

Unyama, the Munamulla headman, received him courteously. He was in a genial mood. It had been a good season, game was plentiful, and the request of the Narranyeri not unreasonable. Besides, he loved to gossip and all he lacked was a new listener. It was a pity, he told Ooloo, he had not reached the camp a day earlier when he might have witnessed the trial of a young man who had murdered his hunting companion. The affair had had some interesting and puzzling features. Firstly, there was no dead body; secondly, the murderer himself had brought news of his friend’s death; thirdly, the young man, owing to a certain popularity because of his gift for story-telling, had been offered the opportunity of admitting himself mad and thus, for his life-time, enjoying all the privileges of the happy-minded – and had refused. And so, shortly, he must be speared to death by the uncle of the young man he had killed.

It was a pity, Unyama declared, that the tribe should lose one who was undaunted in the hunt, clever beyond his fellows in tracking and killing game, who had faithfully obeyed the injunctions of the old men at his initiation and had never been known to covet or molest the young women. But the medicine man, Urgali, had demanded the