Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (39 page)

What made the situation more fraught with anxiety for Rosalind and her family were the confusing reports that reached them while the film was being made. Agatha’s grandson Mathew Prichard vented his spleen by releasing several statements to the press. ‘We were never asked about this film, whether we minded if it was done or not. I think frankly it’s an imposition. I’m her grandson and even I don’t know the truth about the disappearance mystery.’

In a bid to prevent the film from being distributed, Agatha’s daughter Rosalind and Nan’s daughter Judith, under the auspices of Agatha Christie Ltd and with the support of the publishers Collins, fought two unsuccessful court cases in America. When Warner Brothers eventually released
Agatha
in 1979, there was a disclaimer in the opening credits stating that what follows in the film is ‘an imaginary solution to an authentic mystery’.

The lurid story-line suggests Agatha went to Harrogate following a car accident because she knew Archie’s mistress Nancy Neele would be there on holiday, when, in fact, Nancy spent the duration of the disappearance being sheltered from the press by her parents at the family home at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. The role of the American reporter Wally Stanton was especially created for the actor Dustin Hoffman after he expressed interest in working on a project in Europe. The film shows Agatha planning a dastardly revenge and contriving to commit suicide in such a way that her rival Nancy Neele will be framed for her murder. After Wally Stanton thwarts Agatha’s plot and saves her life, they have a brief affair before she goes back to her husband in order to divorce him and begin a new life for herself.

The film alleges Archie spent the night of Agatha’s disappearance with a fictitious friend, Captain Rankin, when, in fact, he was at Godalming Cottage with Nancy Neele and their hosts Sam and Madge James. The producers altered the story-line after learning from their attorneys that Madge James was prepared to swear under oath that this had not been the case and that the pair had never been under her roof together at any one time, despite the fact that Archie had been Sam’s friend just as Nancy had been hers. Madge James’s allegiance to Agatha’s daughter and the memory of Archie and Nancy boosted Rosalind’s confidence during her protracted legal battles with the film’s producer, but the lie was to no avail.

What the producers of the film did not appreciate when they invented the name of Captain Rankin is that the Christies had a Canadian friend who shared the same surname. Air Commodore Archibald James Rankin, who was called Jay by his friends, knew the Christies quite well in the 1920s, staying with them on several occasions. He liked both of them but realized it was not a happy marriage.

A little known fact is that Albert Whiteley, formerly of the Harry Codd Dance Band, had a cameo role in the film; some fifty-odd years after the novelist disappeared he recreated his real-life role by playing in the band and watching Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie dancing in the ballroom of the Harrogate Hydro.

The release of
Agatha
was a bitter pill for Rosalind to swallow, and she never forgave those who were associated with it. The film struggled to find an audience and disappeared swiftly from cinema screens. This was no consolation to Rosalind, whose one wish had been to safeguard her parents’ private life and prevent their memory from being ridiculed.

The publicity from the film led to increased interest in Agatha’s private life and Rosalind was inundated with offers to write a first-hand account of her own life as Agatha’s daughter. Every single one was turned down. Contrary to Rosalind’s fears, the film did not damage Agatha’s literary reputation or discourage film and television producers from taking an interest in her mother’s work.

Throughout the 1980s faithful film and television adaptations of Agatha’s stories became the norm under Rosalind’s vigilant eye. She was helped by literary agent Edmund Cork’s successor Brian Stone, who was also related to her husband Anthony Hicks. She was determined to prevent her mother’s books from being trivialized or turned into travesties like the series of four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford that had appeared in the 1960s. Hardened film and television producers were unnerved by Rosalind because she demanded script approval and got it.

Anthony Martin, one of Brian Stone’s closest friends, was a brilliant source of information for this book. ‘Rosalind is a gorgon,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Producers are frightened of her. Normally authors are frightened of producers.’

When Rosalind disliked any alterations producers made to her mother’s original stories, even minors ones, she strongly objected. Her uncompromising stance led to quality dramas being broadcast which drew huge television audiences.

When BBC television made an offer to film the Hercule Poirot books, Rosalind turned it down because in her opinion the financial remuneration was not sufficient. The BBC rebounded with an offer to film all twelve Miss Marple novels. The role of the elderly spinster sleuth only went to the accomplished actress Joan Hickson after Rosalind had given her consent in the matter. Towards the end of the 1980s she also gave her blessing for the distinguished actor David Suchet to play the title role in the London Weekend Television series of
Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

In 1988, Brian Stone urged Agatha Christie Ltd to hire Anthony Martin to organize the forthcoming centenary events scheduled for 1990. Anthony Martin has stated he found Rosalind and her son Mathew ridiculously conservative and old-fashioned when it came to public relations. At Agatha Christie Ltd there were numerous arguments across the boardroom table between mother and son; Rosalind’s foremost concern was to protect her mother’s writing legacy, while Mathew was focused on how best to financially exploit interest in his grandmother’s work.

‘Rosalind and Mathew had their own ideas on how I ought to go about running the centenary,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Meetings could be very tense when they were in disagreement. When in doubt I followed Brian Stone’s advice since he was used to dealing with them. Part of my brief was to discourage interest in the disappearance. The family didn’t want it mentioned. Agatha’s marriage to Max wasn’t as happy as people think because he was having an affair with one of his archaeological assistants, a woman called Barbara Parker. As a publicist hired by the Christie estate, it was my job to keep it quiet.’

In 1990 the publicity alone from the centenary celebrations of Agatha’s birth generated an extra £2.3 million for the Christie coffers. The week-long celebrations, which included an unveiling by Rosalind of a statue of her mother, climaxed on 15 September with the Orient Express running from London to Agatha’s home town of Torquay. On board were Rosalind and her husband Anthony, Judith and Graham Gardner, as well as the actor David Suchet, who was in full Hercule Poirot costume. Waiting to meet him at Torquay Station was the actress Joan Hickson, who was attired as Miss Marple. The police predicted that a hundred or so people might turn out to witness this historic meeting of Agatha’s two most famous sleuths, something she never permitted in her fiction, but David Suchet and Joan Hickson were mobbed by almost three thousands fans. The English Riviera Centre hosted a lavish celebratory dinner that night attended by over 400 guests, including the Hickses, the Gardners and the stars of the Miss Marple and Poirot series. Each table was named after a title of one of Agatha’s books and afterwards there was a fireworks display for guests to enjoy.

It was Rosalind’s wish that nothing else should be written about the disappearance, but the publicity from the centenary celebrations ought to have forewarned her that interest in Agatha was stronger than ever. Given that Rosalind was such a staunch defender of her mother’s literary reputation and private life, some wondered if there was a falling out between her and Judith and Graham Gardner in 1998 following the publication of the first edition of my own biography,
Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days.

However, Rosalind and Judith no more fell out over the fiasco of the disappearance than their mothers. Both daughters had been through too much together over the years to wage war over their parents’ troubled past. As young children Rosalind and Judith had played together often at Ashfield and Abney Hall, and much later at Styles, where they had tumbled out of the wardrobe, aged seven and ten, respectively, just before the disappearance. The two girls were practically raised together because of their mothers’ close friendship and had shared numerous Christmases, birthdays and other family events. A special affinity had developed between Rosalind and Judith arising from the fall-out of the disappearance, the hardship of their parents’ divorces, being abandoned by their fathers and raised by their mothers. As women they had shared good and bad times, which had strengthened the bond between them. Judith had lost out in love to her Austrian fiancée and Rosalind’s first husband had been killed in enemy action, yet both women had survived the Second World War and their friendship was stronger for it. Rosalind’s Aunt Madge had married Judith’s Uncle Jimmy and there were always Wattses and Christies at Abney Hall and Greenway. Agatha and Rosalind had moved to London after the disappearance to be closer to Nan and Judith, and Nan and Judith had settled permanently in Devon after the Second World War to be closer to Agatha and her family. Rosalind and Judith were part of the fabric of each other’s lives: when they were not seeing each other, they were inevitably hearing about each other’s activities from family and friends.

When Rosalind heard that a film was being made about her mother’s disappearance the first person she turned to for help in her ill-fated legal bid to block the release of
Agatha
was her old childhood friend Judith. The Gardners hated the film as much as Rosalind when they saw it and have never had a kind word to say about it. Rosalind also relied on Judith’s support when it came to organizing her mother’s centenary, and the two women, along with their husbands, Anthony and Graham, contributed generously to the Torquay Museum’s exhibition on Agatha’s life.

Judith and Graham have stated they would never have dreamed of disclosing the truth about the disappearance at this time since the centenary was a celebration of Agatha’s life and literary legacy. It became clear to them afterwards that there would always be speculation about the disappearance unless they spoke out about it. When the Gardners met me in 1997 they decided it was time for the truth to be told, especially as Judith’s mother Nan had been directly involved. I was the first writer they had met who had read all of Agatha’s books; they were astonished by the fact I already knew so much about her life and had visited Abney Hall.

Following the publication of
Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days,
Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine went in to damage control mode in order to assuage Rosalind’s and Mathew’s fury over the embarrassing disclosures contained in the book. This took the form of an exhibition called
Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia
, which ran from 8 November 2001 to 24 March 2002 at the British Museum in London. While the exhibition provided the public with an evocative insight into Agatha’s and Max’s life in the Middle East, the real purpose behind it was to promote the view that the Mallowans’ marriage had been a happy one.

Two books were published in 2001 to coincide with the exhibition,
Agatha Christie and Archaeology
, edited by Charlotte Trümpler, and Henrietta McCall’s
The Life and Times of Max Mallowan: Archaeology and Agatha Christie
. The former featured articles written by various archaeological experts that illuminated Max’s work and the experiences that had influenced several of Agatha’s books. There was a chapter by Janet Morgan affirming the family’s official stance of amnesia where the disappearance was concerned and the view that Agatha’s marriage to Max had been blissful happy. Henrietta McCall’s biography, the first to be published about the archaeologist, some twenty-three years after Max’s death, summed up Agatha’s disappearance in a single word, ‘inexplicable’, and also adhered to the view of a happy second marriage. Both books met Rosalind’s approval, and she allowed precious photographs from the Christie family’s archives to be published in them.

Rosalind also gave Wall to Wall productions permission to dramatize her mother’s autobiography.
Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures
was televised in 2004 and claimed to be ‘based on the actual words of Agatha Christie’. However, this was only partly true: although Agatha’s autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance, the script included imaginary scenes between her and a psychiatrist depicting her trying to regain her memory. The film avoided any suggestion that she might have tried to kill herself on the night of the disappearance and instead took the more seemly view that she had a car accident, yet rather oddly quoted part of Agatha’s 1928 interview to the
Daily Mail
in which she claimed she tried to commit suicide. The producers inserted a disclaimer at the end of the film stating the identity of the alleged psychiatrist ‘remains unknown’. Agatha was also shown at the tenth anniversary celebrations of
The Mousetrap
giving a series of highly personal and in-depth interviews to journalists; these interviews never took place in real life. Rosalind was unhappy with the production, which she felt gave too much coverage to the breakdown of her parents’ marriage and the disappearance.

As part of Agatha Christie Ltd’s ongoing damage control programme against
Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days
, Rosalind decided to commission yet another biography about her mother. Mathew Prichard is alleged to have suggested that the best way of covering up the truth was to release contradictory accounts of the disappearance, which would result in the public becoming confused and uninterested. Rosalind was adamant the official amnesia story should still stand. By now, she was complacent in her belief that any writer receiving the support of her family would be malleable to her censorship and influence.