Crossed Feet

Adelaide, Wednesday, December 1, 1948, 10 pm. At the Glenelg police station, the ceiling fan turns slowly and the smell of the sea drifts in through the open window.

At 6:30 am, a couple found a dead man on the beach, propped against the seawallseawall Low wall along a shore that holds back the sea and separates the beach from the road., feet crossed, with a half-smoked cigarette tucked in his collar. The labels had been cut from his clothes and, in a watch pocket sewn inside his trousers, there was a slip of paper with a single word: "Fim".

The pathologist finds no poison, but swears the death was not natural. In the afternoon, a nurse fainted in the morgue and gave the name: Mervyn Telford, 39, a former Army corporal, arrived from Melbourne on the night train.

The evening paper gave it three lines: "body of man found on sand". Three people crossed Telford's path in Glenelg. One of them laid him on the beach.

Glenelg police station in Adelaide, 1948, at night, an open window onto the beach street.