Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (2 page)

I have also been helped by Shari Andrews of the Old Swan Hotel, formerly the Harrogate Hydro; Malcolm Nessam; Mr Stay of Harrogate Library; the staff of the Library of Congress; Mr T. Lidgate; St Catherine’s House and Somerset House; Michael Meredith; the staff of Bristol Library University; the staff of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries; Sally Harrower of the National Library of Scotland; Linda S. Moore of Charles Parkhurst Rare Books; the late Kathleen Tynan, who scripted the film
Agatha
and to whom I spoke before her death, and Leon Wieseltier, executor of her estate; Roxanna and Matthew Tynan, who since then have helped to make it possible to view their mother’s private research papers and other related matters; and Mr and Mrs Wood for showing me around their home at Styles, Sunningdale.

Finally, special thanks is due to a small band of dedicated and knowledgeable Christie enthusiasts who kept me informed and whose modesty prevents them from being named here.

Preface

On 3 December 1926 a distraught woman mysteriously vanished from her home in Berkshire, England. The discovery of her abandoned car in Surrey led to fears for her safety. She was found a week and a half later in a luxurious hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, reading newspaper accounts of the nationwide search for her. When her extraordinary conduct was challenged, her husband intervened, claiming she was suffering from amnesia. The woman was Agatha Christie, and the events of those eleven missing days would haunt her for the rest of her life.

The disappearance was to prove a watershed in Agatha’s life, and her enduring reticence on the subject has posed a number of intriguing questions. How could a woman who saw photographs of herself on the front pages of newspapers have failed to realize she was the most talked-about woman in Britain? What was the significance of the trail of letters she left in her wake? And what prompted her husband to reveal that she had previously spoken about the possibility of disappearing and, when she was discovered, why was he approached to pay the bill for the police search?

Although the disappearance made her famous, no previous account of Agatha’s life has fully explained the extraordinary circumstances behind the disappearance and why she behaved as she did. I discovered during the early stages of my research in the 1990s that most of the books written about the author have amounted to little more than literary critiques. All the writers concluded that Agatha experienced some sort of nervous breakdown and that the notoriety of the disappearance led to her becoming a recluse. In Britain there had been just two actively researched biographies, and in their account of Agatha’s long life both writers had admitted difficulty in tracing witnesses. An unauthorized biography by Gwen Robyns in 1978 had challenged the family’s official explanation, while an authorized biography by Janet Morgan in 1984 had drawn a decorous veil over the disappearance, blaming much of what happened on press intrusiveness. Both biographers maintain that Agatha never discussed the incident after she was found. This is factually wrong. Agatha did eventually discuss the disappearance, and her motive for breaking her silence was as instructive as her reasons for never publicly speaking of the matter again.

Intrigued by the story, I had a hunch that the explanations previously advanced for the most famous incident in the author’s life contained too many discrepancies to be wholly credible. On my first visit to Newlands Corner, Ralph Barnet, an administrative ranger with the Surrey County Council, gave me a guided tour of the area and the chalk pit into which Agatha’s car almost plunged. It was immediately apparent that her disappearance could not possibly have occurred under the circumstances described by her and latter-day theorists. So what had really happened? Fuelled by curiosity at the many unresolved questions, I embarked on a pilgrimage around England to find out more about the reclusive personality who had figured in her own bizarre real-life mystery.

As a child Agatha had delighted in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
and
Through the Looking Glass
, but it quickly emerged that the cover-up her family and others had perpetrated immediately following her disappearance demanded a greater suspension of disbelief than anything Lewis Carroll could have written. The Christie family’s explanation left numerous questions unanswered and dozens of loose ends. For instance, what was the significance of the identity she created for herself during her disappearance, and why did the press hint broadly at deliberate design? Given that her bank accounts had been stopped by the police, how did she survive financially? Also, what was the intriguing significance of an inscription to a friend written on the flyleaf of one of her books three years after the disappearance?

In discovering the answers to these and other questions my own journey was no less labyrinthine that Agatha’s, but I managed to trace a number of people with first-hand knowledge of the disappearance. The truth has emerged from an impeccable source following an inevitable weakening of the walls of silence that the writer built around herself in her lifetime, since her own prediction that she would be forgotten within ten years of her death has not proved true.

After her sister Madge married Jimmy Watts, Agatha became life-long friends with his sister Nan. The latter’s daughter and son-in-law, Judith and Graham Gardner, have confirmed the truth about the disappearance and other hitherto undisclosed details of Agatha’s personal life. Judith and Graham knew Agatha intimately, and their knowledge of her together spans over eighty-five years. Their reason for confiding in me, in opening up their photograph albums and showing me private letters for the very first time, is because I have read everything Agatha wrote, since, as they say, ‘There’s no short cut to Agatha. You have to read the books.’ They have broken decades of silence and officially endorsed this biography to put Agatha’s relationship with the Watts side of her family into perspective for her fans and also because they wish ‘to put an end to all the ridiculous speculation about the disappearance’. I owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, as do Agatha’s many admirers. My interest in updating and expanding this biography came after the discovery of a new cache of diaries, letters and family correspondence to which they have, once again, given me exclusive access. I am also grateful to other family members for supplying me with background information on the Wattses.

My decision to write this book arises from a life-long interest in the woman behind some of the most morally compelling crime fiction of our time. Her refusal to discuss the more painful aspects of her life has led some critics to dismiss her as an uninteresting recluse. Yet what she went through on the most traumatic night of her life led her to sublimate much of her experience into her fiction: in one instance she accurately reconstructed her departure on the night of the disappearance, and only the initiated knew. The mystique surrounding the disappearance fascinates people to this day. What emerges is the extraordinary story of a woman driven by private torment to the edge of desperation who came back to become one of the best-loved story-tellers of the twentieth century.

Agatha Christie’s Family Tree

Map of Newlands Corner

Prologue
Grandfather’s Whiskers

When Agatha Christie disappeared in December 1926 she was the toast of literary London with the publication of her sixth novel.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
was primarily a connoisseur’s item when it first appeared, quickly selling 4,000 copies, but, as controversy raged over whether she had played fair or tricked her readers over the killer’s identity and further reprints were destined to sell out, what no one realized was that it was set to become one of the most discussed detective stories ever written.

The debates about the novel confirmed Agatha’s place as a rising star in the firmament of crime writers of the time. However, what should have been a happy period in her life was about to become the most traumatic. Shortly before the publication of the book her mother, to whom she was devoted, died. Not long after this her husband, Colonel Archibald Christie, a dashing flying hero of the First World War, told her that he had fallen in love with a young woman called Nancy Neele.

Then the unthinkable happened – Agatha vanished on the night of 3 December and the story became front-page news throughout Great Britain. News of marital discord came swiftly to the attention of the authorities. For a week and a half three police forces in the south of England competed to find her. Innumerable special constables, members of the public and the press assisted in the search. The revelation that the missing woman’s husband had spent the night of the disappearance with his mistress led to whispers of suicide and murder.

The search came to an abrupt end on 14 December when Agatha was officially identified by her husband at a prestigious health hydro in Harrogate. The outcome, although dramatic, never fully explained how and why she had disappeared. Questions were asked about the extravagant lifestyle the missing writer had been leading, and the Colonel’s explanation as to what had happened to her was considered by many to be far from convincing. He responded to public censure by calling in the family doctor and a consultant, and soon a carefully worded statement was released to the effect that she was ‘suffering from an unquestionably genuine loss of memory’. He made a personal appeal to the press to let the matter drop, so that his wife could be restored to health and enjoy their married life out of the media spotlight.

It was, however, the end of the Christies’ marriage, and the rest of the tragic drama that had briefly erupted on the public stage was played out resolutely behind closed doors. It was from this period that Agatha’s revulsion of the press dated; it was later exacerbated by further headlines over her divorce from Archie and his subsequent marriage to Nancy Neele.

The public furore that erupted over the disappearance meant that Agatha went overnight from being a moderately well-known author to being a household name. After she was found she became the target of cartoonists, comedians and bar-room wits. Some members of the public were convinced that she must have experienced some sort of temporary mental breakdown. Others believed that her literary agent had organized the disappearance and spoke of it as a major publicity stunt.

The story soon vanished from the headlines, but a measure of the fame she achieved throughout Great Britain is attested to by a popular song which was sung each summer in the late 1920s on a stage constructed on Bourne-mouth beach by Birchmore and Lindon’s Gay Cadets. ‘Grandfather’s Whiskers’ was altered thus to include their own explanation of the affair:

Grandfather’s whiskers, grandfather’s beard!

Never had it shingled, never had it sheared!

Where did Mrs Christie go when she disappeared?

Into grandfather’s whiskers, grandfather’s beard!

Until the publication of this biography the facts behind the disappearance had remained a mystery, and the incident had never been forgotten, despite the apparently normal and happy life Agatha led afterwards. Sadly, the stability she enjoyed following her second marriage was undermined by further shame and heartbreak which she hid from the public. When in later years she relaxed her guard and allowed the occasional journalist into her presence it was always on the condition that she was not asked questions about her private life or the disappearance. The few interviewers who were privileged to meet her seldom came away better informed: she had her stock answers and seldom deviated from them. The real Agatha was a complex woman who kept herself deliberately hidden from the public.