What Book to Read?

Subtitled ‘The Somerton Man Mystery’ Tamam Shud (2012) is a mixture of memoir, true crime and social history. Kerry Greenwood is best known for her detective fiction series featuring Phryne Fisher, set in Melbourne in the 1920s– a TV version of which is currently being replayed on ABCTV. I’m not a fan of either the books or the TV series, but I enjoyed Tamam Shud – though the Adelaide connection might be part of the reason for this.

On 30 November 1948 a man was seen sitting propped against the seawall, fully clothed, on the beach at Somerton, an Adelaide suburb. Next morning he was found to be dead. And everything about him turned out to be a mystery. His pockets contained no identification, the labels on his clothing had all been removed, he didn’t fit the description of any person reported as missing in Adelaide. His suitcase, when found at the Adelaide Railway Station, proved equally unrevealing. The only possible identifying item he possessed was a small piece of paper tucked into the fob pocket of his coat with the words ‘Tamam Shud’ printed on it. These are the last words of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and mean, in effect, the end. So was this a suicide note? The pathologist who did the autopsy didn’t think so. He concluded that the man had been somehow poisoned, though no specific toxin could be identified. And when the book, from which the slip of paper bearing the words had been torn, was found, it contained a phone number, and some letters that looked like a code. So who and what was Somerton Man?

Kerry Greenwood was told this story by her father, Alf Greenwood, ‘who felt that if a story needed embellishment to make it a good story, then he was the man to embellish it.’ So she was very intrigued to find that the story as he told it was essentially true. She uses it as the occasion to reflect on some of her father’s experiences as a signaller at Woomera after World War II, and as a wharfie on the Melbourne docks. She is also seeking to understand and celebrate her own relationship with him through her exploration of this story.

Having outlined all that has been discovered about Somerton Man, Greenwood indulges in a variety of speculations as to the motive behind his death. Could it have been one the bizarre murders for which Adelaide is known? ‘Murder is universal,’ she says, ‘but Adelaide murder always has a twist’, and she outlines some of them. (Being a fair person, she also talks about the ways in which Adelaide has a rightful reputation for being progressive.) Could it have been a crime of passion? There was a woman who might have been involved, and might have been lying when she denied knowing him. What kind of poison could possibly have been used? Could it have been snakebite? There are lots of venomous snakes around Adelaide. But more dramatically, could Somerton Man have been a spy? Greenwood looks at some of the international issues which impinged on Australia in 1948 to see if Somerton Man could have played any clandestine part in them. Adelaide is relatively close to Woomera, which is where the British were testing nuclear weapons, making it a possible target for Soviet espionage. Or could he have been a smuggler? Could he have been running arms to the nascent Israel? The code – if code it is – has never been broken, so there’s no real evidence one way or the other.

Greenwood draws on a range of evidence, in particular the research of Gerald Feltus, the detective who originally investigated the case, and who has never been able to let it rest – he published a book about it in 2010. She also summarises several other unsuccessful attempts to identify the man, and to break the code; there is an ongoing computer research project which may yet turn up something. She even has a section explaining how codes common at the time work – though I can’t say I understand it.

Greenwood concludes that whatever the pathologist said at the time, Somerton Man could have died of natural causes. But being a writer of crime fiction, she can’t resist coming up with her own hypothesis that fits the known facts. This is clever, but still only a hypothesis. For good measure, the book also includes a Phryne Fisher short story based the Taman Shud affair, using a different hypothesis again. It’s all very intriguing, but it looks as if this is going to remain one of Adelaide’s unsolved mysteries.

You can find out more about Kerry Greenwood on Phryne Fisher’s website. Greenwood also writes a series about Corinna Chapman, talented baker and reluctant investigator.