The Disappearance of the “Queen of Crime”

Author’s Note: I’m trying something a little different this week. I’m diving into an old story that crops up in popular culture from time to time and trying to get to the bottom of it. I’d love to hear what you think of this sort of content.

Content Warning: Mental health, depression, and suicidal ideation.

With sixty-six mystery novels, fourteen short story collections, and a slew of iconic characters, Agatha Christie earned the title “Queen of Crime.” However, one part of her life is shrouded in a mystery all of its own. On December 4^th, 1926, Christie disappeared and triggered one of the largest searches ever conducted at the time. Eleven days later she was found, and despite many viable theories being presented, she took the definitive explanation for these events with her to her grave.

Lead Up to Disappearance

Christie met her future husband, Archibald “Archie” Christie (he’s important to this story), in April 1913 and married him in late 1914 when he was home on leave from fighting the Germans in France. Undoubtedly a time when all the best marriage decisions were made.

At the start of 1926, Christie had five mystery novels under her belt. She, her husband, and her daughter, Rosalind, had been able to purchase a house. They had renamed it “Styles” after the mansion in her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in a move that, in fiction, would be classed as excessive foreshadowing. In June of 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published, notable because it drew national acclaim at the time—it still regularly makes “best crime novel ever” lists to this day—and because it was the one good thing that happened to the author in that year.

In April 1926, Christie’s beloved mother passed away from bronchitis. When Agatha went to clean out her old family home, Archie declined to accompany her—one of the many reasons he did not take home the “Husband of the Year” award for 1926. August saw the author still recovering from a nervous breakdown. The aftermath of her mother’s death had reportedly left her prone to crying at minor inconveniences, as well as occasionally forgetting her own name when signing papers, because grief does some weird things to your brain (this is important later). Archie chose this moment, continuing his effort to be a grade A individual, to announce that he wanted a divorce. While some blame for the strains on the marriage may be given to golf (her husband was obsessed, while she was not) or to Christie’s fragile mental state, his affections for his mistress Nancy Neele (an avid golfer) can’t have helped much. After a period of attempted reconciliation that Christie would later refer to as “a period of sorrow, misery, heartbreak,” her husband declared on December 3^rd that he was leaving to stay with friends (and Neele would conveniently be there too—one biographer suggested it was their engagement party). That evening, Agatha kissed her daughter goodbye and departed Styles in her Morris Cowley, taking a suitcase with her. The car was found around 8am the next morning jammed in a hedge with its wheels hanging over a quarry pit. An old driver’s license in the car marked it as hers, but the author was nowhere to be seen.

The Search

Newspapers across the world quickly picked up on the story, unable to resist the tantalizing nature of a mystery author who herself had become a mystery. Rumors and wild theories quickly sprouted up that she had taken her own life, could be hiding in London in men’s clothing (a claim that reportedly led to Archie checking to see if anything was missing from his wardrobe), or indeed that she had been murdered by her husband. There was little evidence of the latter and the trouble with their marriage was not widely known at the time: The New York Times reported that a friend had described “Mrs. Christie as particularly happy in her home life,” and Archie publicly claimed “My wife and I had no quarrel.”

As with any good Christie novel, the case was rife with dead ends and red herrings. With her picture and description printed in the paper, reports of sightings came in from all across the country. A man informed police that in the early hours of December 4^th he had been approached by a woman who looked as if she had been out all night, matched Christie’s description, and asked him to start her car. On further investigation, it proved that it was an entirely different car and had been driving away from the location of the crash, not towards it. It was not until several days after her disappearance that it was revealed that Christie had written three letters before she left. The one to her secretary was eventually handed over to the police, who announced that it merely gave instructions regarding the author’s upcoming schedule. Archie received a letter, but had burned it and insisted that it included nothing related to Agatha’s disappearance (and we can only theorize what choice words she may have sent to her husband). Finally, a letter was sent to Campbell Christie, her brother-in-law, who sometimes helped her with her writing. This was also destroyed, but he claimed that it stated that she needed to get away for a time and would go to a spa in Yorkshire. This letter would seemingly put the whole affair to bed, yet the police were unconvinced: why would her car be abandoned if she had gone to a spa? We’ll come back to this one at the end.

The reports, combined with Christie’s rising celebrity, helped to create a public frenzy surrounding her disappearance and led to an exhaustive search of the area. The search included 500 members of the police force, dozens of dogs (including bloodhounds), and, for the first time in England, airplanes. A team of spiritualists performed a séance as part of the search and announced that Christie had “met with foul play.” For fear that it may contain her body, the nearby lake, the ominously named “Silent Pool,” was dragged twice, presumably putting an end to a local legend that suggested the pool was bottomless. Additionally, volunteers arrived to help, with reported numbers ranging from two thousand to fifteen thousand—one journalist suggested that the number varied “according to the strength of imagination possessed by the representatives of the papers who were present.” One possible reason for the large turnout is that one newspaper was offering £100 (a little over £6000 or $8000 in today’s money) for information that led to Christie being found alive. These volunteers did not always prove useful, as one Surrey paper notes that a group of searchers managed to get lost in the mist and the police had to deploy flares and scouts to retrieve them.

There were three notably strange additions to the search team. First was the mystery-writer Dorothy L. Sayers, who had a longstanding friendship with Christie. Sayers arrived at the scene to apply her own deductive reasoning and to search for clues, but came up empty-handed. Second was the renowned author Arthur Conan Doyle, in his sixties at this time. He took one of Christie’s gloves to a psychic who was able to give a surprisingly accurate reading of what had happened (although perhaps it was less surprising given that the story was front page news at this point). Doyle’s efforts also proved to be fruitless. Finally, they brought in Christie’s own terrier who was offered a glove to sniff (also known as “the psychic treatment” at this point). The terrier “whined pitifully,” and then proceeded to run around sniffing the ground as Archie and the police superintendent doggedly followed it in circles for three hours before giving up.

Christie Found

There are conflicting accounts of who was the first to notice that Agatha Christie was spending her time in absentia at The Harrogate Hydro, a spa hotel in north Yorkshire. The most likely course of events seems to be that one of the maids recognized the picture in all the papers as being of one of the guests, and from there word got to a banjo player who claimed the £100 from the papers, and to a manager who actually contacted the police. The guest was reported to have regularly eaten in the dining room, sat reading newspapers that had her face on them, and danced the Charleston with the other guests. The fact that social media and 24-hour news had not arrived on the scene in 1926 seems to be the only reason that she was not identified by December 5^th with a fan selfie on Twitter. But what cunning disguise had Christie employed to ensure the concealment of her identity? Physically, none whatsoever. The extent of her cover story was that she claimed to have recently arrived from South Africa, and gave a false name: Teresa Neele (way to not let Nancy have the power over you there, Agatha). Archie later stated that the name had no relevance to either of them and said that he did not know why she had chosen it. Standup guy.

When approached, the author responded to being called “Mrs. Christie,” but claimed not to immediately recognize her husband, at first referring to him as her brother. After a closed meeting between the two, Archie reported that “My wife’s memory is completely gone, and three years have dropped out of her life. She recognises me but does not recall our child Rosalind. It is a terrible tragedy.” Archie managed to keep his affair under wraps for some time and the Christies officially divorced in 1928.

What Happened?

While the public was relieved that Christie had been found safe, her sudden reappearance did beg the question: why had she been silently sitting in a spa for a week and a half while people scoured the downs, worried that they may find her remains on the other side of the country?

Two main theories developed: she had some sort of a mental breakdown brought on by the stress of her life; or the whole thing was a hoax engineered as a publicity stunt to boost book sales or to embarrass her husband. Both arguments have reasonable evidence to back them up but fall short on some questions. Every so often across the decades a biographer has announced that they have solved the case, but there is always someone to refute their claims.

Christie had obviously been pushed to her limits for a long time (earlier occurrences of forgetting her name being notable here), making some sort of mental break seem more plausible. Doctors at the time seemed to be convinced that she was suffering from amnesia. However, the fact that she had the presence of mind to take the name Neele for her stay presents a small problem. She went as far as to take out an advertisement in The London Times asking for relatives to communicate, which Archie reported doctors said was consistent with cases of memory loss. But as, Archie was still concealing the meaning of the name from the public, it is hard to say whether doctors would have had all the necessary information to say whether this could have been a subconscious choice to use a name that was on her mind, or whether it may have been a more intentional and malicious choice. That being said, in his 2009 biography of Christie, The Finished Portrait, former doctor Andrew Norman suggests that this choice of a new personality and her reading the papers without recognizing herself in them does line up with depression and psychogenic amnesia (a type of amnesia that is thought to come on from stress rather than the head wound we’re used to seeing on TV).

Christie never gave a straight answer on the matter. Her autobiography glosses over the whole period, merely stating “there is no need to dwell on it,” and she only spoke about the events publicly a single time in a 1928 conversation with the Daily Mail. She maintained the amnesia story, providing a more thorough explanation of how her car came to be abandoned as it was, explaining that she had considered driving her car straight into the chalk pit earlier that day:

“However, as my daughter was with me in the car, I dismissed the idea at once. That night I felt terribly miserable. I felt that I could go on no longer. I left home that night in a state of high nervous strain with the intention of doing something desperate. … 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. 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. Up to this moment I was Mrs. Christie.“

– Interview with the Daily Mail, 1928

However, newspapers at the time were not convinced by this story and some contacted the family asking for an “authentic answer.” Rather than an explanation related to stress and depression, people have wanted to hunt out a grand scheme perpetrated by the queen of crime. The initial theories focused on an attempt to increase book sales. This would have seemed extreme given that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was already selling well. That being said, it certainly helped her writing career. Between her mother’s death, the breakdown of her marriage, and this particular ordeal, Christie had not been up to writing an entirely new book. At the suggestion of her brother-in-law, she pieced together several short stories into one longer narrative: The Big Four. While it has performed poorly critically over the years, it saw massive initial sales that were attributed to the boost in celebrity status caused by her disappearance.

Once Archie and Nancy Neele’s affair became public knowledge, speculation grew that the incident was organized to spite her husband, with the publicity being a cherry on top. The theory goes that by taking Neele’s name as her alias and posting an advertisement under it, she would ensure that the name entered the public eye. These theories of intentional premeditation do address one of the large inconsistencies in the story: Christie was able to afford her vacation and was seen carrying a well-stocked money belt. If she had been suffering amnesia, or had planned to take her own life, the money belt would be an odd choice, so there’s some credence to be given here.

Finally, in a 1998 biography Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Jared Cade claims that Nan Watts, Christie’s long time friend, left behind papers that indicated the event was indeed a hoax committed to smear Archie’s name. Cade’s scenario extends to Christie visiting Watts after the crash and borrowing the money and means of transportation to get to Harrogate. However, if this is true and represents the whole intent it was ultimately unsuccessful, and we might expect that Christie would have had done something to make the affair more public in the aftermath rather than quietly divorcing Archie at a later date. Furthermore, it does nothing to explain her apparent amnesia upon her discovery.

All of these theories go some way to explaining all of the details, but each leave certain questions unanswered. So, it seems likely that the solution lies in a combination of them.

Ultimately all of these stories deal with absolutes, assuming that Christie, as the “Queen of Crime”, must have either a) had a grand master plan, or b) had complete amnesia and not been in a position to make such a plan. This leaves people disinclined to consider the likely possibility that the events were all a result of her acting erratically, without a consistent plan or master scheme, in a state of mind brought on by a particularly traumatic time in her life.

Allow me to lay out my view of the events, which I believe accounts for all of the most concrete elements from all of the verifiable reporting and stories. Consider this the scene in the library, if you will.

• On December 3^rd 1926, Christie’s husband announces that he is leaving, abandoning their attempts at reconciliation. This is the final crushing blow that she needed, on top of the recent tragedies, to push her over the edge. On her way back to Styles, Christie considers driving into a chalk pit to commit suicide, but refrains because her daughter is in the car.
• She puts her child to bed and writes three letters before departing. The one to Archie we will never know the contents of. To her secretary she says to cancel her meetings as she’ll be away for a while, which might suggest a trip, or a plan to kill herself. And to Campbell Christie she writes that she will be going to a spa in Yorkshire. This last letter seems to rule out that her intention at this moment was to commit suicide, and that she does indeed plan to go to a Yorkshire spa.
• Her letters written, she leaves the house “in a state of high nervous strain” and is overcome by a different impulse and abandons the plan to go to Yorkshire. She attempts to drive her car into a chalk pit, but instead hits a tree, damaging the car and giving herself a head wound. Christie tells us that this was the point from which she suffered from amnesia.
• From here we know that she visited Nan Watts and borrowed money for a trip to Yorkshire. We can assume that if Watts was willing to provide money and keep quiet that Christie must have at least seemed to be of sound mind. The only explanation that consistently explains her actions is that from the accident onwards she shifted from moments of confusion where she did not know who she was, and moments of clarity where she plotted against Archie, resulting in her erratic behavior. Watts stated that the whole exercise was intended to cause strife to Archie, however that information is only extracted from papers decades after the fact. Even if Christie stated this at the time, it does not gel with Christie’s apparent suicidal notions, lack of desire to speak about the events later (which she could use to cast Archie in a worse light), or the diagnosis of amnesia during a contemporary exam unless she was shifting between these two mindsets. With this situation in mind, the remainder of her actions begin to make a little more sense.
• On arriving in Yorkshire she gave the name Neele and took out an advertisement in the paper. We can see this as either because she was truly confused as to her identity, and the name Neele was fresh in her mind, or was part of an ill-conceived plot to cause Archie difficulties that she failed to bring to fruition. Ultimately it is unimportant which of these it was, but if it were the latter and Christie was committed to such a ploy then we would expect there to be additional steps to bring out who the real Neele was and her connection to Archie, rather than simply the use of the name that only has meaning to us in retrospect after their divorce. A lack of intent at this moment is further supported by her failure to disguise herself beyond her name, her open mingling with other customers, and her apparent ignorance of her own picture in the paper, which all point to psychogenic amnesia. Her failure to immediately recognize her relationship to Archie and the doctors’ diagnosis continue this thread.
• To summarize: the story only makes sense if rather than a grand master plan or consistent mental breakdown/amnesia, she was in a state where she had moments of clarity:
  • She was of sound mind writing letters with no plans of suicide.
  • She crashed her car in an attempted suicide.
  • She was experiencing a form of clarity when borrowing money from Watts to travel to Yorkshire.
  • She was in a mixed state during her stay that allowed for moments to plot against Archie but in which she largely remained incognizant of her position,
  • By the time of her discovery she was experiencing enough amnesia to not fully recognize people or remember her own daughter.
  • She did not want to speak of this time again in the aftermath, which is understandable as it was a particularly harsh and traumatic period of her life.

It would be nice to think that Christie had planned it all and was perpetrating her master plan, but ultimately she was just human.

Bonus Facts

1 – The event led to certain questions being asked about the bill that taxpayers might receive from the search, with politicians calling for Archie to cover the cost, and it left plenty of room for the press to criticize the police. The most notable of these criticisms came in commentary regarding the letter Christie sent to her brother-in-law saying she was getting away to spend some time in a spa in Yorkshire. While the police apparently did follow up on this lead and called several Yorkshire spas, they asked only by name, and as Christie was not registered under her own name, they drew a blank. This left one paper to quip that they “did not think it worth their while to follow the obvious clue which would have led them to their quarry. Since Mrs. Christie left a note wherein she said she was going to a ‘Yorkshire spa.’ She went to the best-known of Yorkshire spas.”

2 – In the aftermath of the affair, many reporters were hounding the Christie family to try and get the real story. With Christie in recovery, this left Archie to field the questions. He had done such a good job of maintaining his public image during the ordeal that one Surrey newspaper devoted a column to detailing his military career which they entitled “The Harassed Husband.”

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References

• About Agatha Christie
• Agatha Christie, Disappearance: 1926
• Mrs. Christie Found in a Yorkshire Spa
• Agatha Christie, Missing Writer, Believed Found
• When The World’s Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished
• Members of the public, police and divers joined in search for missing crime writer
• How the Author’s Newlands Vanishing was Reported 90 Years Ago
• Why Did Mystery Writer Agatha Christie Mysteriously Disappear
• ‘The Lady Vanishes’ and Reappears Again
• Christie’s Most Famous Mystery Solved at Last
• Agatha’s Disappearance
• The Complete Christie: An Agatha Christie Encyclopedia
• Archie Christie
• The Big Four
• The Silent Pool
• The Writers
• Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle