Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (18 page)

The press’s doubts about the amnesia explanation deepened after interviewing several of the hydro’s guests, who described Mrs Neele’s behaviour during her stay as perfectly normal. Reporters from the
Daily Sketch
and
News of the World
photographed Agatha’s signature in the hotel register. Many of the journalists checked into the hotel themselves, including the Northern Editor of the
Daily Mail
, who was determined to foil any attempt by the Christies to slip away during the night.

Meanwhile Ackrill’s printing presses belated rolled into action, printing the weekly Wednesday 15 December edition of the
Harrogate Herald and List of Visitors
in which the story of Agatha’s dramatic discovery was headlined ‘Mrs Christie Found at Harrogate, Identified by Husband’.

In the uncertainty leading up to the official identification, extreme discretion had been exercised by the printing firm for fear of the harm to the newspaper’s reputation and its sales if information about Agatha’s suspected whereabouts was not confirmed first by the police. While Ackrill’s employees were aware that a major story was breaking in the town, they were not permitted to discuss the matter. Even Albert Whiteley, who played in the Harry Codd Dance Band at the hotel in the evenings, was not prepared to say anything before the West Riding police confirmed Agatha’s identity. ‘We dared not. We weren’t sure.’ More recently, however, he has broken his silence to describe his recollections of the woman whose adventures had captivated the entire country:

‘I wasn’t a professional musician. By day I was a printer working in the machine room of the local newspapers. I’d rush home and just have time to change into my monkey suit before getting to the hotel for the evening dance in the ballroom. At first I didn’t think there was anything remarkable about this ‘Mrs Neele’. The newspapers had been making a sensation of Agatha’s Christie’s mysterious disappearance for days with front-page photographs of her, but the reproduction wasn’t good in those days. Then one paper offered £100 reward for information about her whereabouts and ran a picture which was a good likeness. That night, while we were playing in the band, the saxophone player and drummer asked me if I thought the lady dancing was Agatha Christie. I agreed it could be. The band leader didn’t want to know because if it turned out we were wrong he’d lose his job. The hotel was a very exclusive place. I was earning four shillings an hour in the band there, which was top money in those days, and I needed it to run my motor bike. So finally it was just the other two members of the band, after discussion with their wives, who went to the police to say they’d found Agatha. They always kicked themselves afterwards because if they’d gone to the newspapers they would have got the £100 reward.’

The evening of Tuesday the 14th saw the press compete to be the first to interview everyone connected with the writer. Peg was flabbergasted to learn of the circumstances of Agatha’s discovery from her son but rallied quickly, saying that her daughter-in-law’s mind must have given way like one of the characters in her books. Meanwhile Charlotte, who had rung round as many family members and friends as possible on first hearing the news from Deputy Chief Constable Kenward, fended off questions from reporters about her employers’ private lives as best she could, while emphasizing that Agatha had been very upset over the death of her mother eight months earlier. Sir Godfrey Collins, who had had no idea of the whereabouts of his best-selling author, was relieved to hear she was alive and he happily anticipated even bigger sales for her current novel,
The Big Four
, then in production at the publishing house.

Archie’s brief statement made it clear that he intended to return to Sunningdale via London with his wife. Later that evening he telephoned her sister Madge and brother-in-law Jimmy. The couple had moved to Abney Hall after the death of Jimmy’s and Nan’s mother, Anne Watts, following a long illness the preceding month. After prolonged discussion Madge and Jimmy agreed to come to Harrogate to help Archie deal with the press. They were extremely glad that Agatha had been found and their anger at learning from Archie of Nan’s involvement was outweighed by their concern to shield Agatha from the consequences of her misguided actions and remove her to Abney Hall. The Wattses were as good as their word, arriving at the Harrogate Hydro early the following day.

Meanwhile the Chief Constable of the Surrey Constabulary, Captain Sant, had issued orders that none of his subordinates were to grant interviews to journalists on the subject of the expense of the search around Newlands Corner and why the Surrey police had persisted in combing the downs after the Berkshire Constabulary had decided that Agatha was, in all probability, still alive. The reporters, who called repeatedly at Woodbridge Road Headquarters in Guildford and at Deputy Chief Constable Kenward’s home in the police station grounds, found he had become as elusive as the woman for whom he had searched in vain.

Superintendent Goddard and Inspector Butler of the Berkshire Constabulary remained highly sceptical, after liaising with the West Riding police, of the claims that Agatha was suffering from amnesia. Superintendent Goddard issued a statement to the press in which he made clear his reasons for believing almost from the beginning that Agatha was alive.

‘Frankly, I had nothing to go on save my own deductions on the facts before me. But I may admit this. I knew that when she left her house it was her intention to drive around for a little while until she had made up her mind what she was going to do. An important factor, to my mind, was the finding of a fur coat in the abandoned car. A woman who was going to commit suicide, I argued, would not get out of a car, take off her coat, and walk a considerable distance away. She would in all probability, having made up her mind, take her life where she sat.

Another factor in my deduction was the manner in which Mrs Christie was dressed. She could have passed the night comfortably driving around in her car wearing a fur coat, and then when she had made up her mind to leave the car have discarded the coat, which was too heavy for walking in. Under the fur coat she wore warm clothing of the sort a woman wears for country walks.

I thought from all these facts that she had walked from her car and had taken a train for some very definite destination. Hence I got busy with posters, circulating them to all police stations. I never believed in the suicide theory. I never believed Mrs Christie had been the victim of foul play. I am delighted she has been found and that the search is at an end. It has been a worrying time for everyone.’

What Superintendent Goddard failed to realize was that Agatha had decided on her course of action before she left home that night. Nevertheless, his remarks, which were uncomfortably perceptive, were widely reported in the
Daily Mail, Daily News
and
The Bulletin and Scots Pictorial
.

The letter Agatha had addressed to her secretary, which had been kept by the Berkshire police while she was missing, was returned to Charlotte. The police officer who unwittingly came closest to perceiving the truth was Tom Roberts, the 21-year-old probationary constable. In his 1987 biography,
Friends and Villains
, Roberts recalled: ‘It seems that Mrs Christie had chosen this site deliberately, as she could leave her car there and then walk to the Guildford–Waterloo main-line station at West Clandon and disappear.’

On Wednesday 15 December the morning newspapers had a field-day reporting the writer’s discovery. Ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew in the
Daily Express
bluntly contradicted Archie’s explanation of the affair: ‘It may well be that when Mrs Christie vanished the tremendous publicity given to her case was rather more than she had bargained for. If this was so we can understand a little better why she remained silent for so long.’

Archie had taken a room near Agatha’s and each breakfasted alone in preparation for their public ordeal. His wife welcomed the idea of going to Abney Hall, partly because Styles contained too many distressing memories for her. Archie was extremely agitated by the public furore that had erupted, while Agatha was so bewildered and apprehensive that she displayed an almost unnatural calm. On their arrival at the hotel Madge and Jimmy acted as intermediaries between husband and wife, since Agatha and Archie were no longer talking directly to each other.

A few moments before their departure, male and female decoys were seen to leave the front entrance of the Harrogate Hydro and get into a Laudellette. The press frenziedly flung themselves on to the wrings of the car and photographed the couple they believed to be the departing author and her husband. Agatha and Archie descended the main stairs of the Harrogate Hydro at 9.15 a.m. for what was to become the most publicly scrutinized journey of their lives.

The
Daily Mail
had stationed a lone photographer by the side entrance of the hotel. As Archie and Agatha made their way along a corridor towards a side door their departure was witnessed by the manageress, Mrs Taylor. The public charade they enacted was therefore for her benefit. When Agatha asked Archie why they were not leaving by the front entrance, he reassured her that she must not be alarmed because she had lost her memory and that everything would be all right. She was wearing a new two-piece pale pink outfit with a double collar, pale pink striped black cloche hat, a row of double-stranded pearls, a coat trimmed with fur around the collar, cuffs and hem, black gloves, champagne-coloured stockings and elegant black shoes. The stylish ensemble hardly reinforced the public’s perceptions of Agatha as someone who had lost her memory and was in a state of mental confusion, but the writer was determined that Archie should know what he was losing in divorcing her for Nancy.

As the novelist stepped outside, the
Daily Mail’s
photographer captured the only photograph of her leaving the Harrogate Hydro, her inscrutable expression caught in profile. A buttons boy was holding open the door of a waiting taxi cab, and when Agatha heard the click of a camera she darted inside. The Christies and the Wattses were relentlessly pursued to the railway station. Word of their impending departure had leaked out, and there was pandemonium. The railway staff, in an attempt to keep the growing crowd at bay, had placed an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the ticket machine that sold penny tickets for access to the railway platform, but the more enterprising members of the press and public bought tickets to the next station and thus gained access to the platform in a bid to catch a glimpse of the Christies’ departure.

Through a prior arrangement with the railway authorities, the two couples did not enter the station by either of the usual public entrances. Instead they used a goods entrance that led on to the up-line platform from the East Parade side. As the Glasgow–London train steamed into the station they made their way along the platform to a private compartment reserved for ‘Mr Parker’s Party’. Mr Parker was the name of the stationmaster, and the notice gave onlookers to understand that the party would be proceeding to King’s Cross Station in London. The platform was so crowded that many of the journalists had difficulty identifying Agatha, since none had previously seen her in person. In a desperate bid to catch the train, many of the reporters, who had entered by the front entrances, ran across the tracks to the far platform. The
Daily Mirror
photographer Edward Dean triumphantly boasted that he had spotted her. The two sisters hid inside their compartment, while Archie and Jimmy remained briefly on guard on the platform outside until the train was ready to leave.

Agatha was deeply shocked by the mob of reporters and photographers, and she burst into tears after the train pulled out of Harrogate. But she was to discover there was worse harassment to come when they arrived at Leeds Station. By then she had regained her composure. While they were expected to continue all the way to London, they caught reporters off-guard by changing trains. As Agatha left the London train she had the misfortune to step straight into the path of the waiting
Daily Chronicle
photographer. The resulting picture, which was undoubtedly the most poignant of all those taken at the time, shows her faltering in her stride, her face a mask of dismay and revulsion at the situation. She is clutching her handbag on the crook of her arm, while in her other arm she is carrying two of the detective novels on loan from the Harrogate library, which would subsequently be posted back.

She did not falter for long. Raising her head and determinedly ignoring bystanders, Agatha walked through the battery of cameras trained on her by the
Westminster Gazette
, the
Daily News
, the
Daily Mail
, the
Leeds Mercury
and the
Daily Sketch
. Madge was appalled by the invasion of their privacy by the photographers. However, her cloche hat and large fur collar enabled her to keep her face partly shielded. She carried the by now notorious new attaché case and the shawl that Agatha had acquired in Harrogate. Archie and Jimmy followed with the rest of the writer’s newly acquired luggage. Agatha, desperate to escape the attention of the press, briefly led the way and, in doing so, betrayed her familiarity with the station, because, without instruction, she unhesitatingly turned on to the platform for the Manchester train. Agatha had used the station many times over the years on her visits to Abney Hall, and the press considered her knowledge of her whereabouts inconsistent for someone who was supposed to have no recollection of her past.

By the time her companions had caught up with her it was evident to Agatha that they were not going to be able to shake off the press, and she resigned herself to this fact. When her grim-faced sister chastened her for letting herself become distracted by bystanders, Agatha made a laughing remark and patted her on the shoulder, much to the astonishment of witnesses. Madge and Jimmy were tight-lipped, fearing that Agatha might get carried away, while Archie was appalled at all the attention they were getting.