Only one thing can be said for certain: on Saturday 4 December 1926, and for some days thereafter, Christie experienced a distressing episode of mental illness, brought on by the trauma of the death of her mother and the breakdown of her marriage. But according to biographer Andrew Norman, the novelist may well have been in whats known as a fugue state or, more technically, a psychogenic trance. Lady Clementine is the story of the ambitious and influential wife of Winston Churchill. I drove automatically down roads I knew to Maidenhead, where I looked at the river. Now, she had sloughed off the past like a dead skin. He took one of Christies gloves to a celebrated medium in the hope that it would provide answers. Well probably never know for certain what happened in those lost eleven days. However, despite the number of mysteries Christie penned, one she lived through has lived on as the most confounding and complex enigmas in the literary world. While Christie explained the disappearance and her loss of memory were the result of a nervous breakdown, the press and later generations of fans have come up with other, more sinister theories . She had been presented with the idea of divorce by her husband, who had been carrying on an affair. In the novels second and more intriguing thread, Benedict, in cinematic fashion, takes us inside one of the biggest hunts for a missing person in British history. Perhaps it's as simple as Agatha made it out to be, but even that theory comes with its unanswered questions. The Otomi: Mesoamericas Forgotten Civilization? Fairfax Media In my novel, we find Christie at a low . At the Hydro, people were beginning to suspect who Mrs Neele really was. Well never know. Not until 14 December, fully eleven days after she disappeared, was Agatha Christie finally located. That is too intentional to ignore. However, on the rare occasion that she did speak, she recalled that she was under severe nervous strain due to marital discord during those days. She took a taxi to a hotel, apparently picked at random, called the Hydropathic. But readers could be forgiven for thinking the author was somehow cashing in on her new notoriety. The next morning Agathas abandoned car was found several miles away by Surrey Police partly submerged in bushes at Newlands Corner in Guildford, Surrey, the apparent result of a car accident. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It was the perfect tabloid story, with all the elements of one of Christie's own 'whodunnit' mysteries. Here, historian Giles Milton explores the author's 11 missing days, and the unprecedented manhunt sparked in the wake of her disappearance. One would think nothing more could be ascertained or imagined about Christies disappearance, yet novelist Marie Benedict has just published the intriguing The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, a fact-based, fiction-laced novel. The head waiter there thought they recognized a guest as Christie, though she claimed to be a South African woman named Theresa Neale. The Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate was a swanky spa that boasted Turkish Baths. Its possible that the idea of divorce triggered this in her, but the fact that she tucked her daughter into bed before leaving does not point to this. However, all these efforts were futile. All that night I drove aimlessly about In my mind there was the vague idea of ending everything. An Odd End to the Story By December 1926, police and detectives concluded that Agatha Christie had left her home for good. Nearly 15,000 people, police, and six bloodhounds took part in this search. But she deliberately played on the fact that she seemed so ordinary. Unfortunately for Christies lasting reputation, many of her biographers, notably her male ones, have been as heavily invested in this narrative as the male police officers and journalists who made it into such a sensation at the time. He was also unsuccessful. This is another act of conclusion jumping that does make sense to me we see ad campaigns that are interactive and not branded as the brainchild of ad execs. She abandoned her car and walked away, out of her old life. The aftermath of Agatha Christie's 11-day disappearance in 1926 was marked by her refusal to discuss the incident publicly, which further fueled speculation and theories about the true reason for her disappearance. For the purposes of this blog, we will cover five of the larger theories, though there are dozens of others. Their specialist knowledge, it was hoped, would help find the missing writer. On the morning of Saturday 11 December, the Telegraph carried a big advert for a forthcoming serialisation of The Murder on the Links. Christies disappearance had the impact it did because of the 1920s context that saw a new kind of media celebrity being created. In 1930, Agatha also remarried. Benedict has written compelling biographical fiction about other famous women to great effect. For the first time, aeroplanes were also involved in the search. It was trumpeted as the work of Agatha Christie the Missing Novelist. The public got involved as well, mounting their own searches and muddying the waters. The death of her beloved mother, and Archies unsympathetic response (he didnt even go to the funeral), had strained their relationship almost to breaking point when Archie confessed that he was in love with someone else a young woman called Nancy Neele and wanted a divorce. 'I believe she was suicidal,' said Norman. First is that some people believed that Agatha Christie had vanished because she was off investigating a homicide somewhere. According to another scenario, her flight was a . Agatha Miller met her future husband, Archibald "Archie" Christie, at a local dance in 1912. So what was the truth behind her disappearance? She soon made a full recovery and once again picked up her writers pen. The solution to the darkest of all Agatha Christie mysteries may be at hand. The paper reported that the police had found some important clues nearby, including a bottle labeled poison lead and opium, fragments of a torn-up postcard, a womans fur-lined coat, a box of face powder, the end of a loaf of bread, a cardboard box and two childrens books., Perhaps more ominous, was the detectives new theory: The police have information which they refuse to divulge and which leads them to the view that Mrs. Christie had no intention of returning when she left home.. Harrogate Hydro, the spa where Christie was found. Recent biographies, like one by Laura Thompson, shed little light on the episode. And so the most intriguing of all of Christies mysteries remains unsolved! She remembered nothing. The final pages She died in 1976 in Cholsey, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire. It is possible, and even a reasonable assumption that Agatha had not lost her memory but was depressed and resentful towards her husband for his affair with Miss Neele. One is that the disappearance was Agatha's bid to regain Archie's affections. The continued disappearance of Agatha prompted people to spin more tantalizing and impossible stories. First, well cover three theories that are related to her relationship. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, her ingenious masterpiece, had just been published and her literary agent was pushing for a follow-up. Two of Christies friends and fellow writers also began to investigate, albeit in very different ways. But she was no longer prepared to tolerate her husbands philandering: she divorced him in 1928 and later married the distinguished archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. Here, historian Giles Milton explores the author's 11 missing days, and the unprecedented manhunt sparked in the wake of her disappearance At shortly after 9.30pm on Friday 3 December 1926, Agatha Christie got up from her armchair and climbed the stairs of her Berkshire home. The famous 11-day disappearance of writer Agatha Christie in the 1920s has long bamboozled biographers, but the mystery may now finally be solved. When Agatha Christie went missing in 1926, fans could not help but draw comparisons between her disappearance and her sensational mystery novels. The next theory is that Christie purposefully staged her disappearance to ruin her husbands life. (It was the unspoken subject. When an official form required her to put down what she did, the woman who is estimated to have sold 2bn copies always wrote housewife. My issue with this theory is that Christies career was never in danger of failing. Missing Three Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers. With this new information in hand, Archie and investigators travelled to Yorkshire, where the Hydropathic Hotel was located. What Christie said has the unfortunate effect of sounding like one of her novels, in which the loss of memory plot would feature time and time again. This story was originally . After the initial act of leaving, though, Im less convinced of what happened, simply because eleven days is a long time to stay gone. Mrs. Christie was therefore a well-known figure when she disappeared, and the mystery gripped the literary world and the public with intrigue. All these theories show us that people wanted to twist Agathas strange disappearance to resemble the plot of a mystery story, eminently suitable for a mystery author. UPDATE: In honor of Agatha Christie's 125 birthday, we're revisiting what is perhaps the greatest mystery surrounding this remarkable woman the unsolved one. Read More. There were photos of her in the Daily Mail, a new publishing contract with William Collins and a 500 advance for serial rights to The Man in the Brown Suit that paid for a Morris Cowley car. Her disappearance without a clue, save for the discovery of her abandoned car, stymied the police and thousands of civilians who combed the British countryside in search of her. The episode continues to fascinate. The police, scrambling for clues, turned to Christies manuscripts, examining what they thought was her work in progress, The Blue Train., Between 10,000 and 15,000 people took part in the search for Mrs. Christie, aided by six trained bloodhounds, a crate load of Airedale terriers, many retrievers and Alsatian police dogs, and even the services of common mongrels.. My issue with this theory is that Christies career was never in danger of failing. Her disappearance sparked a nationwide search, with more than a thousand people involved, both police officers and volunteers from the public. Despite her gigantic success, she retained her perspective as an outsider and onlooker. After this, Agatha said that she had lost her identity. Until now the two most popular theories offered for these strange events have been that either Christie was suffering from memory loss after a car crash, or that she had planned the whole thing to thwart her husband's plans to spend a weekend with his mistress at a house close to where she abandoned her car. For 11 days the country buzzed with conjecture about the disappearance. They had no idea of the identity of their fellow passenger, and proceeded to discuss the most famous author in the world. Agatha regained her memory, which is why it could not have been complete amnesia. Several plausible theories have competed for favour . My wife, hed said to a reporter, had discussed the possibility of disappearing at will engineering a disappearance had been running through her mind, probably for the purpose of her work. The milder have her down as a woman wronged, with an understandable desire for revenge. The famed murder mystery writer was in the midst of a divorce from her . It makes most other literary biographies seem unnecessarily padded. By this stage, Christie was already a celebrity. First, well cover three theories that are related to her relationship. However, the couple went their separate ways soon afterwards with Archie marrying Nancy Neale and Agatha marrying archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan and no one involved ever spoke of the disappearance again. It seems that Christie shocked herself into realising that whatever happened, life was worth living. The Mystery of Mrs. Christie is a stunning story of yet another woman who seems to have it all, but who, like many, must fight to hold on to what she refers to as her authentic self. The ending is ingenious, and its possible that Benedict has brought to life the most plausible explanation for why Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926. . She did not need a publicity stunt to get her name out there or boost sales. Too much of a coincidence? The novelists car was found abandoned near Guildford on the edge of a chalk pit, the front wheels actually overhanging the edge, the paper reported. As the first day of investigations progressed into the second and third and there was still no sign of her speculation began to mount. It even made the front page of the New York Times. Who speculated about the novelists disappearance. They tipped off her husband, Colonel Christie, who came to collect Agatha immediately. She sidestepped a world that tried to define her. And then we have the more cynical and derogatory theory that the disappearance was a publicity stunt. Two years after her divorce, Christie remarried. He had been having an affair with a woman named Nancy Neale (sometimes spelled Neele). What do you all think? Its an empowering and wonderful tribute to the woman who has sold more than 2 billion books and whose stars, including Poirot and Miss Marple, are still and may always be at the forefront of the mystery genre. And she wasnt just a novelist, either: she remains historys most performed female playwright. Available at:https://allthatsinteresting.com/agatha-christie-disappearance, Bipin Dimri is a writer from India with an educational background in Management Studies. I have to say that I really like the spiteful revenge fantasy of this. Agatha Christie's eleven-day disappearance mystery solved, BBC historian claims The documentary maker said the author entered a "fugue state" amid a whirlwind of personal drama. Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle brought in an occultist to help, and if Hercule Poirot, Christies most famous creation, were a real person, he too would have joined the hunt. When the fight was over, Christie went upstairs, kissed her seven-year-old daughter goodnight, and left the house in her Morris Cowley. Dame Agatha Christie is still known as the queen of crime fiction, 100 years after her debut novel was published. Top Image: Where did the famous detective novelist go? By June 1926, Agatha Christie had published six of her most famous works and was considered a promising author of mystery novels starring her Belgian detective Poirot. She played billiards and even sang aloud. Unbeknown to the police and public who were looking for her in Surrey, matters in Yorkshire were moving swiftly towards a denouement. On the 8th of December, 1926, the police called off the search for Agatha, saying that her brother-in-law had received a letter from her. I think I am worth more than that, was her answer. Historic Mysteries is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases. Dorothy Sayers visited the scene of the writers disappearance to search for possible clues. When I told people I was writing about Christie, their first questions were often about the 11 dramatic days in 1926 when she disappeared at the height of her writing career, causing a nationwide hunt for her corpse. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Archies and Agathas stories intertwine as the novel winds down, and all the while, the power in their relationship, most satisfyingly, shifts to Agatha. The police were now set in their opinion that Christie had committed suicide. There was an especially tantalizing detail near the end of the story: Christie, the paper claimed, had been spooked by her own house. Agatha Miller was born in 1890 in Torquay, England. In the carriage, she said, were two women discussing me, both with copies of my paperback editions on their knees. Christie was 36 at the time and had already published several detective novels, including "The Secret Adversary" and "The Murder on the Links.". Some journalists ventured to suggest that the novelist had deliberately drowned herself. Bizarrely, she used the assumed name of Theresa Neele, her husbands mistress. Two of Britains most famous crime writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Dorothy L. Sayers, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey series, were drawn into the search. She began to equip herself with a new wardrobe. (The dog just whined pitifully.). Wild parties, sex, drugs, drink and outrageous behaviour. The missing 11 days have never been explained. Had the author run away from her heartbreak, unsure of where she was going or what to do? However, despite her success Christie kept a tight rein on the family finances insisting on a careful, modest lifestyle. She did not need a publicity stunt to get her name out there or boost sales. Searching for a body in the poolwas considered hopeless and the police feared it would never be recovered. This article was first published on HistoryExtra in October 2014, Enjoying HistoryExtra.com? Correction: June 11, 2019An earlier version of this article misstated the car Agatha Christie drove. Additionally, its been said that Christie signed into the hotel under Neale, which was the surname of her husbands mistress. No one knew where Christie was for almost two weeks. But thats incorrect, and Ive pieced together the surprising number of statements she did in fact make about it. When I reached a point on the road which I thought was near the quarry, I turned the car off the road down the hill toward it. The fact that the driver was missing but the headlights were on and a suitcase and coat remained in the back seat only fuelled the mystery. The lane has been the scene of a murder of a woman and the suicide of a man. Agatha is then said to have left her daughter with their maid and departed the house later that same evening, thus beginning one of the most enduring mysteries she had ever masterminded. On the evening of the 3rd of December, 1926, famous mystery novelist Agatha Christie disappeared. The disappearance of Christie made headlines on December 6th, and suddenly the world was cast into grave worry over the fate of their favorite mystery writer. Spiritualists even held a sance at the chalk pit. It is possible that she disappeared with the intention of ruining her husbands weekend getaway with his mistress. Divorce record of Agatha and Archibald Christie, 1927-8. The next theory is that Christie purposefully staged her disappearance to ruin her husbands life. By December 1926, police and detectives concluded that Agatha Christie had left her home for good. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. In the aftermath of Agathas disappearance both Archie Christie and his mistress Nancy Neale were under suspicion and a huge manhunt was undertaken by thousands of policemen and eager volunteers. H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency, via Getty Images. After the initial act of leaving, though, Im less convinced of what happened, simply because eleven days is a long time to stay gone. On a fateful Friday evening, on December 3, 1926, Agatha Christie drives off in her cherished Morris Cowley, leaving her seven-year-old daughter and her nanny behind. Perhaps hoping to divert attention away from Nancy Neele, he introduced the idea that maybe his wife had deliberately disappeared. They both had her paperbacks. Alone, and using an assumed name, she had been living in a spa hotel in Harrogate since the day after her disappearance, even though news of her case had reached as far as the front page of the New York Times. It stands in a lonely lane, unlit at night, which has a reputation of being haunted. Its a rare condition brought on by trauma or depression. The Silent Pool, a natural spring near the accident scene, for instance, was said to be the site of the death of a young girl and her brother and many thought the novelist had drowned herself there. All that night I drove aimlessly about In my mind there was the vague idea of ending everything. Ryan and Shane break down your theories about Agatha Christie's disappearance in this week's post mortem.Credits: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bfmp/videos/130057. So she created a new character for herself, a character as which she could do what she wanted. Whilst Archie continued to fight across Europe for the next few years, Agatha kept busy as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Torquays Red Cross Hospital. Then she climbed into her Morris Cowley and drove off into the night. Why no one could have spotted her was blamed on a possible male disguise she might have been wearing, a conceit that could have come straight from one of her books. The novelist was found at a Yorkshire spa, nine days after she disappeared. The next chapter in the saga took place about 15 months later, when Agatha Christie sued her husband for divorce. She was tired; she was in deep distress. First is that some people believed that Agatha Christie had vanished because she was off investigating a homicide somewhere. When the Worlds Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/books/agatha-christie-vanished-11-days-1926.html. Miss Corbett, the hotels entertainment hostess, spotted that Mrs Neele still had the price 75 shillings pinned to her new shawl. At the Hydro, on the Sunday morning, no newspaper was taken up to the bedroom. The car was found near a chalk quarry the next morning. She had been presented with the idea of divorce by her husband, who had been carrying on an affair. Christie herself was unable to provide any clues to what had happened. On December 4, 1926, beloved mystery writer Agatha Christie vanished in a case that remains unsolved today. In a dramatic unmasking which would have been at home in the pages of any Christie novel, Archie travelled with the police to Yorkshire and took a seat in the corner of the hotels dining room from where he watched his estranged wife walk in, take her place at another table and begin reading a newspaper which heralded her own disappearance as front page news. Not quite. At the encouragement of her older sister, Margaret herself a writer who was often published in Vanity Fair Agatha wrote the first of her many detective novels, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Available at:https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/books/author-reconstructs-agatha-christie-s-famous-15856699, When the Worlds Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished. Indeed Agatha makes no mention of it in her autobiography which was published posthumously in November 1977. At last, she put into action a vague plan that had occupied her thoughts for the previous 24 hours. In his book, The Finished Portrait, Norman says that her adoption of a new personality - she took the name Teresa Neele - and failure to recognise herself in newspaper photographs were signs that the novelist had fallen into a psychogenic amnesia after a period of depression. In Benedicts imagination, Agatha wonders, What had I done wrong this time? whenever the manipulative Archie says something like, Do you think I like being here with you? Up to this moment I was Mrs. Christie. Ten days later, the head waiter at the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, (now known as the Old Swan Hotel) contacted police with the startling news that a lively and outgoing South African guest by the name of Theresa Neale may actually be the missing writer in disguise. Its told, day by day, through the loathsome Archie, and in these chapters, Benedict alludes to secrets Archie is hiding from the police, including his engagement to another woman. What lay behind her extraordinary 11-day disappearance in 1926? Her state of mind was very low and she writes about it later through the character of Celia in her autobiographical novel Unfinished Portrait.. She had then boarded a train to Harrogate. Others hinted at a far more sinister turn of events. Readers must have thought he protested far too much. But Agatha had been found. Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe was a wealthy widow who died before the novel began. Dorothy Sayers visited the Christie home and scoured it, hoping for clues but finding nothing. Crowds at King's Cross station hope to catch a glimpse of Christie. Asher spotted that Mrs Neele had brought hardly anything with her. The mystery, which has puzzled both the police and Christie fans for 80 years, is a why-dunnit, rather than a who-dunnit. The premise Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890. The Royal Fraternity of Master Metaphysicians and The Overtoun Bridge: Where Dogs Leap to their Deaths. The winter light must have faded by the time her train arrived. Listening to you drone on about culture, music, silly book ideas, your mother, and your . Now writer Andrew Wilson has unveiled a new theory as to why she . No reliable witness has seen her since the night she left her house in Sunningdale a week ago, The Times reported. Several plausible theories have competed for favour over the years, but biographer Andrew Norman believes he is the first to find one that satisfies every element of the case. Some said the incident was nothing more than a publicity stunt, a clever ruse to promote her new book.
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