Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (48 page)

Rosalind’s friend Susan North whose personal life inspired a sub-plot for
Absent in the Spring (Judith and Graham Gardner)

News Review
, 16 December 1948, featuring Agatha on the cover. The 58 year-old writer’s advice to would-be writers was admirably succinct: ‘(1) Pay much attention to length and form and little to other writers’ opinions; (2) decide whose style you are going to copy, then keep on until you produce your own style.’
(Jared Cade)

Clockwise from top left: Charlotte Fisher, Agatha, Nan, Jean Watts (nee Blomfield) and Mary Fisher outside Greenway
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

An inscription from Agatha to Nan in
Murder Is Easy
: ‘To my old friend B. Hinds from Agatha’
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Agatha and Nan’s daughter Judith, 1950s
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Agatha with her brother-in-law Jimmy Watts outside his sister Nan’s house in Paignton, Devon, June 1957
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Judith and Graham Gardner in the Middle East during the winter of 1962; Graham photographed the artefacts unearthed by Agatha’s second husband Max Mallowan, the celebrated archaeologist
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Agatha’s last inscription to Nan, shortly before her friend’s death in December 1959, appeared in
Cat Among the Pigeons
: ‘To Nan who once went hunting schools with me!’
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Left to right, taking coffee after lunch at Greenway in the late 1960s: Judith, Diana Kirkbride – Max’s former pupil who also took part in the Nimrud excavations from 1951 onwards – Agatha and archaeologist Jeffery Orchard
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Also present, left to right, Cecil Mallowan, his sons John and Peter, and his brother Max, Agatha’s husband. The writer gave the royalties from her book
Hickory Dickory Dock
to John and Peter
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Judith sailing with Agatha’s grandson Mathew Prichard on the Gardners’ yacht off Torquay in the late 1960s
(Judith and Graham Gardner)

Max and Agatha, photographed by the
Daily Sketch
on holiday in Toledo, Spain, 8 November 1967
(Jared Cade)