The Raven Post

Editor’s Note: This article contains mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation; please proceed with caution.

Those who choose to peruse our vast library may be surprised to discover that nowhere does it contain the works of one Agatha Christie. This is certainly not a product of ignorance or disrespect but is rather a matter of legality—and, of course, practicality. We here at The Raven Post limit our historical archives to those works that may be reproduced without risk of violating copyright law, and more often than not, this requires that our cutoff date be situated at least one hundred years in the past. While Christie published her first book in 1920—entitled The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced her inimitable fictional detective, Hercule Poirot—much of her catalogue is not yet in the public domain; what’s more, though she was no stranger to short stories or plays, she most famously dealt in novels, a format which, in many cases, is too lengthy for our humble purposes. So then, you will certainly understand that we cannot, alas, include her alongside her fellow literary giants—at least, not as of now. Even so, we maintain a deep fascination with and solemn respect for the author and her works, and much as is the case regarding our spiritual proprietor, Edgar Allan Poe, we are always captivated by strange tales befitting of mystery’s foremost authors that may be found within the annals of their own lives.

Previously, we have covered the inscrutable circumstances of Poe’s final days, and now, our historical lens moves forward to the year 1926, when mystery writer Agatha Christie seemingly vanished into what is known colloquially as “thin air.” The events leading up to and encompassing her most peculiar disappearance are as follows:

Christie and her husband, Archibald (or “Archie”), lived in a large, mostly brick house in Sunningdale, just a few dozen miles west of London. The home sat on about two acres of land and boasted twelve bedrooms, three bathrooms, oak parquet floors, and, among other amenities, “independent hot water service,” according to a real estate listing posted in 1927, shortly after the events soon to be unraveled. Unfortunately, little of this tale is concerned with the Christies’ magnificent home, as the author elected to flee it soon after a quarrel with her husband.

The couple’s union was famously troubled; when Christie’s mother passed in April of 1926, Archie seemingly reacted with little sympathy and didn’t even deign to attend the funeral. In August of that year, Archie requested a divorce from Christie, to whom he had been married for nearly twelve years—one for each of their home’s bedrooms. (My apologies, I’ll do my best to banish any additional real estate distractions.) This request was a loaded one; Archie, then thirty-seven years of age, was not simply disillusioned with his existing marriage but hoped to pursue a fresh one, specifically with his secretary, Nancy Neele, aged just twenty-five. On the night of December 3, 1926, he announced his intention to spend the evening with friends, a gathering at which Ms. Neele would also very likely be present. Christie herself was not invited. Following Archie’s departure, Christie also left the house without word as to where she might be heading, much to the probable bafflement of her maid, to whom Christie entrusted care of her young daughter.

No hint of her whereabouts was established until the following morning, when her car was discovered in some brush along a Surrey road, abandoned. A suitcase was located in the back seat, along with a fur coat and Christie’s driving license. The headlights were illuminated. Why might Christie have driven away from her house the night of December 3, only to abandon her car approximately fifteen miles away? According to a contemporaneous police report from deputy chief constable William Kenward, “The car was found in such a position as to indicate that some unusual proceeding had taken place, the Car being found half-way down a grassy slope well off the main road with its bonnet buried in some bushes, as if it had got out of control.” This peculiar set of circumstances led many to suspect foul play had befallen the mystery author, and the media soon took particular interest in the story.

As is common in cases of missing women, many members of the public began to suspect her husband, Archie, of wrongdoing. A separate contingent of citizens, seemingly informed by the author’s erratic behavior, guessed that she had, in one way or another, taken her own life. Still others suspected a publicity stunt. Notably, even famed author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, attempted to solve Christie’s vanishing with the help of a psychic medium.

At least one sighting was reported in the days following her disappearance. According to Kenward’s police report, a man by the name of McAlister claimed he had aided a woman matching Christie’s description restart the car’s engine around 6:20 a.m. on the morning of December 4. He also alleged she was “sparsely dressed for such an inclement morning, and … she appeared strange in her manner.” Reports such as these only fueled the mystery, and as the days dragged on, speculation persisted.

Then, at last, eleven days after Christie first vanished, a civilian spotted Christie at the Swan Hydro hotel in Harrogate, over two hundred miles from Christie’s Sunningdale home. This development, however, only raised additional questions for many, and not until Christie herself elucidated the sequence of events sometime later would any answers come to light.

Christie had checked into the Swan Hydro under the name Nancy Neele, her husband’s mistress, and directly following the public’s discovery of Christie’s whereabouts, she seemed not to remember what, exactly, had transpired in the preceding week and a half. News of Christie’s apparent fugue state sparked additional chatter and speculation that were only partially quelled when Christie, after a period of recovery, explained her disappearance—and loss of memory. She stated, “I just wanted my life to end. All that night I drove aimlessly about … In my mind there was the vague idea of ending everything. I drove automatically down roads I knew … to Maidenhead, where I looked at the river. I thought about jumping in, but realised that I could swim too well to drown … then back to London again, and then on to Sunningdale. From there I went to Newlands Corner … When I reached a point in the road which I thought was near the quarry I had seen in the afternoon, I turned the car off the road down the hill towards it. I left the wheel and let the car run. The car struck something with a jerk and pulled up suddenly. I was flung against the steering wheel and my head hit something.” Christie went on to explain that this bump, which seemingly caused her memory loss, also did her the service of granting her a clean slate. “Up to this moment I was Mrs Christie,” she said, implying that the accident marked a fresh start in her life. She also relayed that, “I remember arriving at a big railway station and being surprised to learn it was Waterloo. It is strange that the railway authorities there did not recall me, as I was covered with mud and I had smeared blood on my face from a cut on my hand. For [twenty-four] hours I wandered in a dream and then found myself in Harrogate as a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa.”

This account, while it did satisfy some, effectively separated the public into two schools of thought: Some believed Christie’s retelling, trusting that a head injury sustained in a car accident could cause such a severe gap in lucidity; others, however, suspected this was yet another of Christie’s mystery tales (in which memory loss often played a significant narrative role). This subset of the public believed Christie feigned her own disappearance as an act of retaliation against her philandering husband, perhaps hoping police inquiries into her whereabouts would ruin his romantic weekend with his mistress. As for Archie’s part, following Christie’s return, he simply communicated to authorities that his wife was suffering from both memory loss and a nervous disorder; when asked to contribute to the cost of the police’s search for her, he reportedly refused.

The exact contents of those eleven days during which Agatha Christie was unaccounted for may never be chronicled with any precision. Fortunately, despite her perils, the author emerged on the far side of the ordeal relatively unscathed—though, of course, the personal details of her mental state during that time can never truly be known, nor discounted. Christie and her husband at last divorced in 1928. She wed her second husband, Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, in 1930, and their union continued until Christie’s death in 1976.

Though speculation surrounding this pivotal handful of days persists even now, the author herself spoke of the incident only once. Perhaps—and here we can certainly only speculate—she preferred to leave her mysterious legacy to her beloved writings.

Until future correspondence,
Your humble Editor-in-Chief

Photo credit:
James Emmans / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Violetriga / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0