An Unsolved Mystery

Northern Advocate, 29 August 1938, Page 6

An Unsolved Mystery

WITH the abandonment of the police search for the body of the missing Hindu, Da hi Desai, it seems that still another impenetrable mystery is to be added to the list of New Zealand’s unsolved crimes. There is already a formidable list of these, with a North Auckland ease among the more recent of them. But, as far as the Waihou Valley and Taharoa mysteries are concerned, the failure to reach a solution cannot possibly be held against the police. In each ease they conducted a meticulous and thorough examination extending over a long period. Their diligence and devotion during their fruitless quest at Lake Taharoa fully merits the praise bestowed by Police Commissioner Cummings, whose tribute to the 80 men ivho have spent the worst of the winter at Lake Taharoa will be endorsed by the public. It has been said, rather jokingly, that “a policeman’s life is not a happy one.” W. S. Gilbert’s quip would almost certainly have the heartfelt endorsement of the police officiers who, from the middle of May till last week, camped at the exposed and inaccessible Maori settlement where the Hindu storekeeper’s disappearance caused strange and sinister rumours. It is easy to imagine how unpleasant the task of the police party must have been. They had systematically to drag the bottom of a large, muddy and windswept lake. They had to probe among shifting sand dunes. And, at the same time, they had to maintain themselves under conditions of extreme discomfort in a locality where every requisite had to be brought in several miles from the road by tedious methods. It must have been galling after all this to abandon the search. Readers of detective fiction will undoubtedly view this as a most unsatisfactory climax. Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie would have provided a swift solution with some brilliant piece of deduction. But crimes in real life are rarely solved that way. More often it is the patient, diligent searching for clues and collating of evidence that build up an effective case. Such methods are unromantic at any time, and they are doubly so when, as in this ease, they are unsuccessful.