Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days (9 page)

On the way she stopped her car for a rest. To her horror her wire-haired terrier Peter wandered into the middle of the road and was knocked unconscious by the undercarriage of a hit-and-run vehicle. Agatha, presuming him to be dead, lifted him on to the back seat of her car and frantically resumed her journey. She failed to notice that by the time she reached Styles Peter was regaining consciousness. Agatha ran into the house crying out that Peter was dead. When Charlotte Fisher, who had returned from Scotland, reassured her that the dog was alive Agatha refused to believe her. In fact Peter made a full recovery and was his usual self within a few days. Agatha later incorporated aspects of Peter’s accident in her stories ‘The Edge’ and ‘The Man from the Sea’ and in her novel
The Rose and the Yew Tree
, which was published under the
nom de plume
of Mary Westmacott.

A fortnight after his defection Archie returned. Agatha felt as if she had received a direct reprieve from God when Archie suggested that he had perhaps made a mistake and ought not to break up the marriage for the sake of their daughter. It had not been an easy decision for him to make, and Agatha was not only conscious of this but of her own needs as well. She wondered whether she could face the pain of further betrayal if he broke his promise to be faithful.

She felt they should keep their marriage going for another year to see how it went, but her husband would agree only to a three-month trial reconciliation. The one person who showed insight into Agatha’s problem was her secretary Charlotte, who told her: ‘He won’t stay.’ Rosalind, with the uncompromising candour of the young, was outspoken to her mother on the matter: ‘I know Daddy likes me, and would like to be with me. It’s you he doesn’t seem to like.’

Agatha resorted to desperate measures and in October arranged a month-long trip for her and Archie to Guéthary, a tiny bathing village at the foot of the French Pyrenees between Biarritz and the Spanish border. Archie reluctantly agreed to go. The Pyrenees held memories of Agatha’s happy childhood and her parents’ perfect marriage, but a less-than-idyllic trip to the same region with Archie the previous year ought to have warned her that it was impossible to turn back the clock.

Away from Styles Agatha found it easy to imagine that their relationship was improving. But the couple were unable to establish the easy camaraderie of the early days of their marriage. They acted as though they were polite strangers, and, after all the recent strains, such an atmosphere seemed almost a relief. In fact, it was the lull before the storm that would destroy their lives for ever.

Chapter Six
Desperate Measures

Agatha had known the real test of her reconciliation with Archie would begin on their return to Styles in November 1926, but his absences immediately told their own story. Agatha found his sullen silences hard to bear, and ugly confrontations ensued.

Her torment was made worse by Archie’s refusal either to commit himself to the marriage or totally break away from it. Agatha insisted that she would not give in to a divorce if Archie asked for one again, because she was convinced that their daughter would be stigmatized for the rest of her life. The fact that Agatha would physically throw objects at Archie during their fights only made matters worse.

There were pressures, too, from outside the marital battleground. Her publisher Sir Godfrey Collins was delighted with the public’s reception of
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
and was anxious to know when he could expect delivery of her latest Hercule Poirot book. The popularity of Agatha’s Belgian detective was attested to by the requests of the
Liverpool Weekly Post
and
Reynolds’s Illustrated News
to serialize stories with the character. Although Agatha was persevering with
The Mystery of the Blue Train
, she clearly was not going to finish it in time for publication in early 1927. Owing to her productive short-story output, Sir Godfrey and her literary agent Edmund Cork exerted pressure on her to agree to release a series of Hercule Poirot tales under the title
The Big Four
.

These stories had already appeared as an on-going serial in
The Sketch
from January to March 1924 under the title
The Man Who Was Number Four
. Agatha was reluctant to fall in with their wishes, because she recognized only too well that the collection would fall well short of her readers’ expectations. The stories read like a parody of an Edgar Wallace thriller and, until Agatha produced
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
, she was undecided as to whether she was a writer of thrillers or detective stories.

In her autobiography Agatha gives the impression that the twelve stories which make up
The Big Four
were put together during 1927 with the help of her brother-in-law Campbell Christie in order to give the appearance of a full-length book, since she claims the breakdown of her marriage had not left her well enough to attempt such a task by herself.
The Big Four
was in fact in production by Collins before her disappearance, and the alterations she alone instigated at this time amounted to no more than minor editing.

Furthermore, Agatha tells her readers that the reason why she was desperate to write following her marital breakdown was because ‘I had no money now coming in from anywhere.’ But nothing could be further from the truth. Clarissa’s will, in which she had left everything to Agatha, including Ashfield, had been probated on 29 June 1926, and after the deduction of death duties Agatha was the recipient of the handsome sum of £13,527 16s. 8d. It was enough money for Agatha and Rosalind to live on for several years, and Agatha’s reason for claiming to be very poor at that time in her memoirs was to create the impression of a woman hounded into a mental breakdown during 1926. He pre-disappearance decision to release
The Big Four
early the following year arose from her desire to get her one-book-a-year routine back on track.

Despite her new financial security Agatha was under considerable mental strain in the weeks before she went missing. At any rate she was well enough on 12 November to write to His Honour Judge Bodkin – otherwise known as Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, author of Paul Beck, the ‘rule of thumb’ detective – thanking him for his letter and agreeing there were few very good detective stories in print. She also asked if he was the author of the Paul Beck stories in which she had taken ‘great pleasure many years ago’.

Agatha kept up appearances as best she could with friends she had made in Sunningdale. She looked forward to Christmas, when she could get Archie away from Sunningdale by taking him and Rosalind up to Abney Hall for the traditional festivities with Nan and the rest of the family. Agatha also planned to take Archie abroad to Portugal in the New Year with some friends from Sunningdale, the da Silvas, in the feverish hope that by removing him to a different environment he would forget Nancy.

Meanwhile Agatha looked around for a suitable flat or house to lease in London in order to be closer to her husband’s place of work. She was determined to sell Styles, or at least rent it out, indefinitely if necessary, and she was aware that her daughter would have to change schools. But these were small sacrifices to ensure that she kept Rosalind’s father.

Conscious of her approaching middle age Agatha felt unable to compete for her husband’s attentions, and she duly vented the intense jealousy she felt towards her younger rival by writing ‘The Edge’. This short story not only affirms Agatha’s belief in the sanctity of marriage but sheds light on the one circumstance under which she might have forgiven Nancy for taking Archie from her.

The raw emotion that imbues ‘The Edge’ sharply contrasts with the usual mystery element to be found in Agatha’s fiction and makes it one of her most compelling short stories. Interestingly, Agatha cast Nancy in the role of ‘the wife’, while she cast herself as Clare, ‘the other woman’ who has always loved her rival’s husband but who has not stood in the way of their happiness. The turning point in the story comes when Clare stops off at a distant hotel for refreshments, after taking her dog to the vet following an accident in which he has been knocked over by a car. Clare’s casual glance at the names in the hotel register leads to the discovery that her married rival has been having an affair. This discovery, after years of suffering and self-denial, unleashes Clare’s jealousy and leads to a bitter confrontation on the Downs during which she threatens to expose the wife’s adultery. The pressure Clare applies to the wife is too great, and, rather than face exposure, the wife jumps from the ridge to her death. The story ends with Clare being driven mad from the unforeseen consequences of her blackmail.

While the death of the Nancy Neele character was merely a gratifying literary whim on Agatha’s part, Clare’s resulting madness was in many respects symbolic of her creator’s despair over her real-life marital problems. Agatha had never been an unfaithful wife to Archie; this would have been the one circumstance under which she might have been able to forgive Nancy for stealing her husband.

The story was finished shortly before Agatha became the most talked-about woman in the country. In those final days Agatha’s obstinacy, the stubbornness that was also her greatest strength, drew her near to the edge of despair. What she found especially hard to bear was that eleven years of marriage could have turned so swiftly on Archie’s part to an ill-concealed dislike of her. Agatha felt worn down by the need to keep up appearances, as much for the servants’ sake as to minimize Rosalind’s anxiety. Her secretary Charlotte proved invaluable, taking over the running of the household at this time.

Judith recalls that her mother, Nan, was very anxious about Agatha; the visits Nan made to Styles helped to alleviate the strain between the Christies. One day, shortly before the disappearance, ten-year-old Judith and Rosalind, aged seven, were playing in a bedroom when they climbed on to the top shelf of a wardrobe and closed the door. Their mothers heard a loud crash and hurried upstairs. The wardrobe had toppled over, trapping the two girls inside. Nan and Agatha were relieved that their daughters were not hurt; in fact, Judith and Rosalind roared with laughter at their adventure.

Agatha slept badly and ate little in the fortnight before she disappeared. It seemed to her that if Archie could betray her then nothing, not even God, could be trusted. God ceased to exist for her: her overriding thought was that Archie had betrayed her following her mother’s death. She cast herself as the innocent victim and had no comprehension of how she had contributed to the breakdown of their relationship. There were endless rows, because he was still undecided as to whether or not to leave her for good. Agatha, failing to realize this, lost her temper completely and flung a teapot at him. It was the worst thing she could have done. It was Nan’s opinion that if Agatha had not thrown the teapot she might have kept Archie.

Agatha withdrew into herself, enveloped in bitterness and misery. Her one solace at this time was her canine companion Peter who gave her unconditional and unquestioning love. Husband and wife went through the motions of leading normal lives, but the atmosphere in the house grew increasingly acrimonious until Agatha’s nerves were near breaking point.

On the morning of her disappearance the couple had their worst row ever. Charlotte, aware of the discord between husband and wife, had left early on a day trip to London, reassured by the sight of Agatha romping happily with Rosalind. During the row Archie made it clear that he had no intention of accompanying Agatha to Beverley in Yorkshire for the weekend, as she hoped he would. He then told her he could not stand the charade of their attempted reconciliation any longer.

Deeply shaken, she accused him of seeing Nancy behind her back. He admitted that he had made plans to spend the weekend with his mistress and that he had decided, once and for all, to marry her. Their argument ended with Archie storming off to work.

Agatha was extremely upset and, later that morning, she left Styles in her Morris Cowley without telling any of the servants where she was going. Although she was still feeling despondent after she returned to Styles for lunch, she drove via Newlands Corner with Rosalind and Peter to Archie’s mother’s house in Dorking for afternoon tea

While she waited for her mother-in-law’s kettle to boil, Agatha sang songs and joked with her daughter. The subject of Nancy Neele was not raised in the little girl’s presence, and Agatha told Peg she was going to Beverley for the weekend. Peg was aware that Clarissa’s death eight months earlier had come as a great blow to Agatha, and when she commented on how well her daughter-in-law seemed Agatha agreed that she was feeling much better. A few minutes later Agatha appeared to become very depressed. Peg noticed she was not wearing her wedding ring, only her engagement ring. When Peg commented on this, Agatha sat perfectly still for some minutes gazing into space, then, issuing a hysterical laugh, she turned away and patted Rosalind’s head. It was dusk by the time Agatha, Rosalind and Peter left at around five o’clock and began the hour-long drive via Newlands Corner back to Styles.

Agatha dined alone after Rosalind was put to bed and waited and waited for her husband’s return. Part of her was desperate for him to redeem himself; another part of her knew he wouldn’t.

When Archie failed to come home on the evening of Friday 3 December 1926 there was no doubt in Agatha’s mind – or the minds of the servants – that he had left for good.

Unable to bear the strain of her situation any longer she got into her car at 9.45 that night, dressed in a warm knitted outfit, fur coat, a velour hat and low-heeled shoes with buckles. She knew by then that her marriage was irretrievably over and that nothing could bring her husband back. As Agatha drove away from Styles her plan was to spite Archie for his infidelity. Tragically, she was unaware that she was setting in motion the most widely publicized missing person’s inquiry of the day. The consequences that rippled out from her actions that night would be far more devastating than any she had ever conceived in her fiction and would reverberate throughout the rest of her life.