Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (15 page)

The
Daily Sketch
disclosed that a well-known medium in Guildford and her spirit guide Maisie, ‘a 12-year-old African girl, tribe unknown’, had asked to be given something belonging to Agatha in an attempt to locate her. The
Daily Sketch
told its readers that the request had been met when an unnamed ‘London journalist’ (in fact the
Daily Sketch’s
own reporter) had supplied the medium with a used powder-puff that he said belonged to Agatha:

‘The powder-puff worked like a charm. As soon as the medium went into a trance ‘Maisie’ took command . . . Sensational claims were made by the medium, who afterwards described Mrs Christie’s fate as a tragedy almost too terrible to speak about, and suggested that the Black Pond should be dragged.’

In recounting this story and emphasizing that the powder-puff had never belonged to or been seen by Mrs Christie, the
Daily Sketch
virtuously asserted that it was ‘animated by the sole desire to prevent the public from being misled by a too-ready faith in the supernatural powers of mediums’.

In recent years former
Daily News
reporter Ritchie Calder has mistakenly recollected that the clairvoyant consulted by the
Daily Sketch
claimed that the body would be found in a log-house. None the less, he has told an entertaining story regarding the discovery of a summer retreat in Clandon Wood, involving himself and the
Westminster Gazette’s
Trevor Allen, which gives insight into the journalists’ rampaging imaginations:

‘We peered through the front windows and saw, silhouetted against the rear window, the shape of a body lying on a cot. It proved to be a bedroll. Nevertheless, the house, obviously closed up for the winter, had been recently occupied. Trevor Allen in great excitement discovered a “bottle of opium”. Actually, it was ipecacuanha and opium, in discreet proportions, used in the treatment of chronic diarrhoea. Accepting our wild goose chase, we went back to Guildford and told our colleagues, as an amusing story, about our adventure. They immediately swarmed off to the clearing. One picture-paper reporter took a barmaid of a Guildford hotel with him. He scattered face-powder on the doorstep, and got her to step in it. Next day the shoe print appeared with the caption “Is this Mrs Christie’s?” Another used the “oppi” without the “ipec”.’

On Monday the 13th many of the tabloids now indulged in their most fanciful theory to date: that Agatha might be living in London disguised as a man. While it seems extraordinary that the press could have advanced such a ludicrous suggestion, the public was not inclined to dismiss it. After all, had not Ethel Le Neve been dressed as a man when Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Walter Dew had arrested her and Dr Crippen?

In apparent support of this outrageous theory, the afternoon edition of the
Westminster Gazette
revealed that Inspector Butler of the Berkshire Constabulary had left Ascot earlier in the day to make inquiries in London. While he did indeed travel up to London that day, the police officer’s purpose was to visit Scotland Yard in order to liaise with the police there and was in no way influenced by the melodramatic speculations in the press.

Publicity seekers continued to contact the newspapers claiming to have seen Agatha in places as diverse as Torquay, Plymouth and Rhyl, and this had led to the police in these districts being drawn in to the search. An omnibus driver and conductor were both adamant that Agatha had travelled on their vehicle between Haslemere and Hindhead, and the manager of the Royal Huts Hotel in Hindhead also insisted she had lunched at his establishment on the weekend. The confusion arising from the suspected sightings was made worse because none of the women involved came forward to correct the cases of mistaken identity.

Meanwhile Stanley Bishop of the
Daily Express
(who had heckled Deputy Chief Constable Kenward for not searching all the pools on the Downs) had persuaded the London diving firm Siebe, Gorman and Company to participate on a voluntary basis in the search (in addition to supplying interviews and posing for photographs for the press). This led to the Surrey police being erroneously blamed for the expense of hiring divers. In conversation with the Home Office, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward later gave one of its officials, Arthur Dixon, to understand that ‘all talk of divers, aeroplanes and other stunts were merely press invention’, but this told only part of the story. When the press discovered that Stanley Bishop had engaged the divers, they laughed at him because many of the pools were so shallow that the divers would have had to crawl about on all fours.

The London
Evening News
was one of several newspapers to report Agatha’s disappearance alongside that of a woman called Una Crowe who had gone missing from her London home on Saturday the 11th and was found drowned on Sunday the 19th. While there was no connection between the two disappearances, such editorial juxtaposing undoubtedly gave the two cases full prominence – and led some readers to wonder if there was a link.

Unknown to the press and its readers, the West Riding police had spent Monday investigating the claims of the two Harrogate bandsmen, Bob Tappin and Bob Leeming, and interviewing the staff at the hotel in the town where the guest suspected of being the missing author was staying.

Bob Tappin’s widow, Nora, has since explained how she was the catalyst for the two Bobs going to the police on Sunday the 12th with their suspicions: ‘Bob and I and Bob Leeming and his wife Beatrice were together later that night. The two men were on about this woman they thought was Mrs Christie, and I said a bit cheekily, “If you don’t go to the police, I will.”’

Rosie Asher, the chambermaid who originally alerted the two bandsmen to her suspicions, confided that she had first noticed the mysterious guest because of her unusual shoes with their large buckles and distinctive black handbag which boasted the latest in fashion accessories, a zip. Until then, Rosie had only seen the handbags with this sort of fastener in London magazines. Since her retirement from the Harrogate Hydro in the mid-1970s Rosie has explained why she did not go to the police herself:

‘I didn’t dare let on at the time. I suppose I was one of the first to know (it was Agatha Christie), but it was more than my job was worth to get involved. I just went about my normal business. She had only one small case but said her luggage was coming along later. I though it all a bit odd. I was putting some newspapers on a table when I saw some pictures of this person. I noticed right away that she had unusual-looking shoes and handbag. I thought: I’ve seen those somewhere before. Then it dawned on me.’

Her lasting impression of Agatha from all those years ago was:
‘I do remember she liked dancing. She was often in the ballroom and was a most attractive woman.’

After surreptitiously observing the mystery guest on Monday the 13th the West Riding police concluded that this was the woman for whom the whole country was looking, and they got in touch with Deputy Chief Constable Kenward that night. He, not believing in the substance of their claims, failed to pass on the information to the Berkshire police or to the household at Styles. He instead drew up plans to extend the search around Newlands Corner to forty square miles, starting on the Wednesday. No less than eighty members of the Aldershot Motor Cycling Club offered their assistance.

On the morning of Tuesday the 14th the West Riding police once again contacted Deputy Chief Constable Kenward, requesting his help in establishing whether or not the hotel guest in question was the missing novelist. The result was that the policeman rang Styles around midday to ask Charlotte to travel north to identify the woman suspected of being her employer. The secretary declined on the grounds that she had to collect Rosalind from school and rang Archie at work in London. The information she passed on, while scant, convinced them both that his wife had almost certainly been located, and he caught the 1.40 p.m. train from King’s Cross.

As a result of the tip-off, a large contingent of Fleet Street reporters had travelled by train to Harrogate late on the evening of Monday the 13th. Among them was Sidney Campion, late-night reporter for the
Daily News
. What was especially intriguing about this new lead was that the hotel guest suspected of being Agatha had registered as a Mrs Neele – the same surname as Archie’s mistress Nancy.

It was the opinion of the press that the coincidence was too uncanny to ignore; after all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But where exactly was the mystery female? Contradictory sources suggested she was staying at either the Cairn Hydro or the Harrogate Hydro. A discreet police cordon erected on the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th suggested it was the latter, but the journalists could not be sure. The police were being unusually tightlipped, declining to comment on the reason for the delay in telling the reporters what was going on and why they had not already approached the woman in question. Something unusual was happening and the press were quick to feel the tension.

Rather than wait for statements from the police, the London
Evening Standard
decided to blow the whistle. It gained the Fleet Street scoop of the week by supplying accurate information on Agatha’s suspected whereabouts in its 2.30 p.m. edition, when it revealed that a woman staying at an unnamed hotel in Harrogate was awaiting identification by Colonel Christie, who was still some four hours away by train.

Chapter Thirteen
Official Protocol

Shortly after 7.30 on the evening of Tuesday the 14th Archie ceased to be suspected of murdering his wife when he formally identified her at the Harrogate Hydro in Yorkshire. The West Riding police officer in charge of arranging the identification was Superintendent Gilbert McDowall of the Claro Division. The plan adopted by him was to tread delicately, given that the spa town depended on attracting distinguished and affluent visitors, whose stays often required the utmost discretion.

Beyond keeping the woman thought to be the author under observation with the help of Sergeant Baldwin of the Claro Division and Superintendent Hellewell of the Harrogate police, it was decided that nothing further should be done until her husband’s arrival. The authorities had set the stage for what, if handled badly, could turn out an embarrassing fiasco or the happy resolution to a baffling mystery that had fascinated the nation for eleven days.

One of the most intriguing questions to arise – once suspicion had given way to certainty about the mysterious guest’s identity – was how the most talked-about woman in the country could have escaped detection for so long when she was staying in one of the best hotels in the finest spa town in England. Agatha had not only read the newspapers on a daily basis but had been observed doing so by other guests and staff. Why had no one noticed the likeness between the photographs emblazoned all over the front pages of the newspapers and the female guest sooner?

Within the rigid British class structure of the time, Harrogate’s prosperity as a spa town depended on its assuring comfort, excellent service and total discretion to its wealthy and influential visitors. It was unheard of for locals to approach a famous person in public for an autograph or a photograph. Harrogate’s status as the pre-eminent hydropathic centre of Europe arose from its eighty-seven mineral waters and the first-class service of its hotels and shops. The standard of discretion and service was such that Harrogate’s shopkeepers would deliver goods on request to hotel guests, so it was not necessary to pay a visit to the stores unless one wished to do so. Queen Mary, however, who often visited her daughter Princess Mary and son-inlaw Viscount Lascelles at nearby Goldsborough Hall, liked to browse around the Harrogate antique shops with her ladies-in-waiting. The spa was equally popular with foreign dignitaries and aristocrats. Many guests, including members of the Russian Royal Family, often stayed there incognito, which is one of the reasons why Agatha’s identity went unchallenged for so long.

Other reasons for her not being approached were that she had created a plausible new identity for herself and her reluctance to get involved in discussions about the celebrated missing crime writer with staff and other guests at the hotel. It became clear that many of Harrogate’s residents had suspected that Agatha was staying there but did not do anything about it. ‘Of course, we knew it was her,’ recalled Mary Topham, daughter of one of the town’s councillors, ‘but we didn’t say anything.’ Harrogate’s reputation for discretion was upheld. While the writer’s discovery created a sensation throughout the rest of the country, there was barely a ripple in Harrogate society; when the town published its retrospective official account of the year’s social events in the journal
Ackrill’s News
the story did not warrant a mention.

The Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel, more usually known as the Harrogate Hydro, was one of the town’s largest and most elegant establishments. It was set in five acres of ornamental gardens, with tennis courts, bowling green, putting green and a garage lock-up for twenty-six cars. There was hot and cold water in every bedroom, electric light throughout, baths on each floor, an American-style elevator, numerous public rooms, as well as a well equipped suite of baths, including ‘Turkish, Electric, Needle and Medicated’, with massage treatment available from a physician in daily attendance.

It was in the Winter Garden Ballroom that the Harry Codd Dance Band, known to residents as the Happy Hydro Boys, had played at night, its members quietly speculating among themselves whether the attractive woman who often danced and sometimes sat on the sidelines in the shadows doing newspaper crosswords was the missing author. The band consisted of Harry Codd, its only professional member, on violin, Frank Brown on drums, Reg Schofield on piano, Albert Whiteley on banjo, in addition to the two bandsmen who had gone to the police, Bob Leeming on saxophone and Bob Tappin who played drums and banjo (and who wore a monocle, something of a gimmick at that time). A Miss Corbett regularly accompanied them as a singer.