The mystery writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976) provided a
mystery of her own in 1926. On the evening of 3rd December she
disappeared from her home in Berkshire and the next morning her car was found
abandoned a few miles away.
The event became big news as 15,000 people volunteered to
search the surrounding countryside and a lake was dragged by the police, the
fear being that Mrs Christie had met her death by accident or design.
However, the search was called off eleven days later when
Agatha Christie was found, perfectly safe, staying at a hotel in Harrogate,
Yorkshire. Despite this outcome, the mystery of what had happened during the
interim between disappearance and discovery continued, because Agatha Christie
had no memory of how she had got from Berkshire to Yorkshire and could offer no
explanation for her behaviour.
The mystery has never been solved, although various theories
have been put forward.
One thought was that the whole thing was a publicity stunt
designed to boost sales of Agatha Christie’s latest novel, “The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd”. However, this is unlikely because the book was doing very well anyway
and there was no need for any such promotion.
Another suggestion made at the time was that she had
suffered an attack of amnesia after the recent death of her mother.
A more likely explanation is that it had something to do
with Agatha Christie’s private life, particularly her state of mind over the
crumbling of her marriage to Archibald Christie. A clue to this possibility is
that she checked into the Harrogate hotel using the name of Archibald’s
mistress, which must mean that the affair was uppermost in her mind.
The marriage stumbled on for another two years before the
Christies divorced. Agatha would later find happiness with her second husband,
the archaeologist Max Mallowan. She used to joke that an archaeologist was the
perfect husband because he got more interested in his spouse the older she got!
The story of Agatha Christie’s disappearance was featured in
the Hollywood film “Agatha” in 1979. This frankly disappointing production
starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, the latter playing a completely
fictional American investigating journalist. The attempt to make an exciting
story out of something that was basically a non-event led, somewhat
predictably, to a result that left much to be desired.
© John Welford
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