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Magazine
Case of the missing writer
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Was the brief disappearance of the `Queen of Crime' the result of some form of amnesia or was it just a publicity stunt? RANDOR GUY probes Agatha Christie's as-yet unsolved case ...
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The writer at the time of her vanishing act ...
NO! This is not a newly discovered Perry Mason mystery novel! It's a real life mystery, as baffling today as it was 70-odd years ago.
December 4, 1926: Early in the morning, a teenaged gypsy was wandering around a popular "Lovers' Meet", near a lake known as Silent Pool in rural England. He found a car abandoned on a road near the lake, covered with frost. The lights were still on and he immediately ran to inform the police. Inside the car the cops found a fur coat, a small suitcase, which contained two dresses, a pair of expensive shoes and a driving license, which was long expired. The name on it read: Mrs. Agatha Christie!
Some months earlier, the "Queen of Crime", Agatha Christie had discovered, much to her shock, that not only was her marriage to Archibald Christie heading towards the rocks, but also that her husband was having an affair with a young woman, Nancy Neele. On December 3, the Christies had quarrelled over the affair. Colonel Christie packed his bags and left. That evening, Agatha Christie wrote two letters, one to her husband and another to her secretary to cancel all appointments as she was going away. A third was apparently sent to the Deputy Chief Constable, Surrey, stating that her life was in danger and she needed help. And then she drove away in her car and vanished...
Flashback: Agatha Miller was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devonshire, England, into a wealthy family of American origin but living in England. Even as a child, she wrote stories and poems. She broke her engagement to a Major in Indian Army when she met Lt. Col. Archibald Christie, son of an Indian Civil Service (ICS) sahib and a High Court judge in India, at a dance party! They were married on December 24, 1914 and she became Mrs. Agatha Christie — A name destined to achieve immortality in crime fiction.
At first, married life was all bliss, and they travelled often to distant places. And then came the attractive young spinster Nancy Neele... .
December 5, 1926: By now, the news of the mysterious disappearance of the famous crime writer had spread like a summer forest fire. Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic went to town about the case of the vanished crime writer.
Many suspected suicide, and this theory gathered strength when a local chemist revealed that Mrs. Christie had consulted him many times about the methods and use of poisons and the chemicals in them! Some suspected that she might have been murdered and, obviously, the amorous husband was the first suspect!
December 7: The Daily News offered a £100 reward to the first person furnishing them with information leading to the whereabouts, if alive, of Mrs. Agatha Christie. This news item set in spate the speculation that Mrs. Christie might no longer be alive, and possibly the newspaper had some kind of clue about it!
Rumours and gossip began to fill the atmosphere and then hundreds of cops and thousands of ordinary folks jumped into the ring to search for the missing writer. Special machinery was commissioned to dredge the Silent Pool and, while a plane flew at low altitude monitoring the operation, smart police dogs sniffed around the ground looking for the telltale signs of the body. Desperate to find the famous body, the police clutched at many straws that seemed like clues, but, to mix metaphors, they turned out to be red herrings.
Meanwhile, a woman came forward to say that she and her friends had seen a woman answering to the description of Mrs. Christie, wandering around rural Hampshire looking dazed and lost. Her clothes were covered with frost!
... and later as the bestselling author.
Cops kept strict watch over Archie's house and his movements were monitored closely. Unable to make headway, the police appealed to the general public to help them and 15,000 volunteers signed up. They were split into groups and sent to many counties to look for the body. It seemed at that stage that the police had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Christie was no longer alive and most certainly murdered and her body buried somewhere fathoms deep.
To add to the suspense, interest and intrigue, another celebrated crime writer Edgar Wallace published an article in the Daily Mail about his colleague's disappearance. He called it "mental reprisal" on somebody who had according to him, had hurt Christie and her objective was to seek revenge against someone by getting him or her into trouble over her disappearance. He ruled out suicide and hinted at loss of memory leading to "cerebral confusion". Few understood what Wallace was writing about but everyone read the article and even discussed the pros and cons of his theory.
And then came a break — News that was almost incredible and that continues to baffle human imagination and reasoning to this day. A musician in a hotel in a holiday resort in Yorkshire informed the local police that, at the hotel, was a lady registered under the name Mrs. Neele. And the description of the guest suited the missing crime writer. If Mrs. Christie was the person, why on earth did she register under the name of her husband's mistress? No reasons have been found to this day. Cerebral confusion? One wonders.
Sensation ruled the roost when this news broke into newspapers and reporters from London took a special train to the holiday resort. And one of them accosted her as Mrs. Agatha Christie. She admitted she was the missing person. The mystery had been solved.
But it was not yet the end of the story. Many reporters dug around for more info. It brought into life more intriguing facts. After she had registered as Mrs. Neele, she had informed her fellow guests that she was from Africa on a holiday in England. She placed an ad in a London daily asking for relatives in Africa to contact Mrs. Neele at a box number. Of course nobody responded for there was no such woman in Africa on holiday in England!
When her husband came to the hotel to officially identify her, she was totally unfazed by his presence. That was not all. She exclaimed that her brother from Africa had arrived. More cerebral confusion?
Doctors who examined her later said that she was suffering from some unusual kind of amnesia and the she should not be bothered to find out what had driven her to such inexplicable, bizarre and intriguing conduct. However, many journalists and others were almost certain that it was a publicity-seeking gimmick. She had published only seven novels by that time and was not yet the "Queen of Crime".
Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, she did not make any direct reference to this unusual event in her autobiography.
However, her marriage to Christie ended in divorce. Later, Agatha Christie married Max Mallowan, the well-known archaeologist. But she continued to write under the name "Agatha Christie".
(In later years, she wisecracked that the advantage of marrying an archaeologist was that the older the wife grew, the more was his interest in her!)
Everything is grist to a writer's mill and Mrs. Christie made use of this strange event in her life to write a novel, Unfinished Portrait, which she wrote under her other name Mary Westmacott — a pseudonym she used to write five other novels.
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