Agatha Christie

by Janet Morgan

  The investigators were now thoroughly confused. The Berkshire Police, led by Superintendent Goddard, had asked that the search be extended to parts of England more distant from Sunningdale. Superintendent Goddard’s remarks were brief and direct: ‘I do not accept the theory that Mrs Christie committed suicide at Newlands Corner. There is no evidence that I can find to support that theory, nor do I see any special reason to assume that she is dead.’ Archie shared this opinion. Superintendent Kenward, however, ‘reiterated his view that Mrs Christie is dead, and that her body is somewhere near Newlands Corner.’ He based his view, mysteriously, on ‘documents in his possession’, a letter which Carlo had entrusted to the police.

  It was the methodical Superintendent Goddard, rather than his more excitable colleague, who was proved right. On the evening of Tuesday, December 14th, Archie was reunited with Agatha at the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. The story ran at enormous length in the following day’s newspapers, though not, ironically, in the weekly Harrogate Herald, which appeared each Wednesday, since its correspondents had been so preoccupied with telephoning details of the story to the metropolitan newspapers, for which they acted as ‘stringers’, that they had overlooked their own.

  In the week and a half Agatha had spent at the Hydro, where she was said to have been staying under an assumed name (variously reported in the Mail as being ‘Mrs Theresa Neele’ and, presumably based on a reporter’s distorted remarks on the telephone, ‘Mrs Trazeneil’), she had ‘seemed normal and happy’ and ‘sang, danced, played billiards, read the newspaper reports of the disappearance, chatted with her fellow-guests, and went for walks’. This lively picture derived from the findings of the Mail’s special correspondent in Harrogate, whisked from Sunningdale by the fast train to interview the more loquacious of the hotel’s staff and guests, and Mr and Mrs Taylor, who managed the Hydro. Neither of the Taylors had seen Agatha when she had arrived on December 4th but Mr Taylor understood that ‘without hesitation’, she had taken ‘a good room on the first floor, fitted with hot and cold water’, at the price of seven guineas a week. Mrs Taylor had for some time thought that their guest resembled Agatha’s press photographs and so, she told the Mail, had some of her staff. ‘I told them to say nothing,’ she declared but, ‘someone outside the hotel informed the police.’

  Superintendent McDowell of the Yorkshire Police had alerted the Surrey Police, who telephoned Carlo at Sunningdale. Since she could not leave Rosalind, she telephoned Archie at his office and he took the afternoon train to Harrogate. According to the press, Archie and Superintendent McDowell, and possibly other police officers, had stationed themselves in an alcove by the lift, so that Archie could identify Agatha as she came down the stairs to dinner. As she took up an evening paper, containing the story of the search for herself, with her photograph, Archie made his way towards her. ‘She only seemed to regard him as an acquaintance,’ Mr Taylor said, ‘whose identity she could not quite fix. It was sufficient, however, to permit of her accompanying her husband to the dining-room.…’

  In a statement to the press, Archie said: ‘There is no question about the identity. It is my wife. She has suffered from the most complete loss of memory and I do not think she knows who she is. She does not know me and she does not know where she is. I am hoping that rest and quiet will restore her. I am hoping to take her to London to-morrow to see a doctor and specialist.’ Archie, the newspaper stated, then expressed his thanks to the police.

  On the following day, December 15th, Agatha and Archie left the hotel, not for London but, temporarily, for Cheadle. That short journey was difficult enough. They were driven to Harrogate Station and, mobbed by the press, transferred to a reserved first-class carriage. At Leeds, where they had to change, they were chased along the platform but managed to find their reserved compartment. Agatha and Archie were met at the end of their journey by James and Madge, whose car took them to Abney. There the gates were shut.

  12

  ‘… an unquestionably genuine loss of memory’

  There were those who did not talk, or did not tell all they knew, to the press: Carlo, who set down her recollections in the letter to Rosalind; Mrs James, Archie’s and Nancy’s friend; Albert Whiteley, who played the banjo in the band at the Hydro, and Mrs Schofield, the pianist’s wife; Raymond Ross and Stanley Hickes, two young local reporters, and Dick Ledbetter, a local press photographer; Sally Potts, the chambermaid who looked after Agatha’s room, and another maid, Rosie Asher. From what they said later, and from Rosalind herself, whose reunion with her mother was sufficiently strange to impress itself on a seven-year-old’s memory, we can build up a picture of what befell Agatha after she left Styles on December 3rd.

  At first Agatha herself could not recall what had happened between that time and the moment when she was greeted by Archie at Harrogate. The two doctors who were called to Abney to examine her – Dr Henry Wilson, Madge’s own doctor at Cheadle, and Dr Donald Core, a distinguished neurologist at the University of Manchester – published a joint announcement that she was suffering from ‘an unquestionably genuine loss of memory’. They recommended that she see a psychiatrist. Agatha was unhappy at this suggestion – psychiatry can be painful as well as time-consuming – but Madge insisted. She had reproached Agatha for not telling her how ill and unhappy she had been during the summer and autumn. Agatha, who not unnaturally felt guilty at causing so much worry and unwelcome attention, agreed to see a man in Harley Street. With Carlo and Rosalind, she took a flat in Kensington High Street, from which she went to Harley Street for therapy.

  With the psychiatrist’s help, Agatha recovered her memory of much that had occurred. She could not recall leaving Styles, nor driving about, nor what had happened to the Morris; according to Carlo, the psychiatrist believed that the blank period was due to concussion. Agatha had apparently caught a milk train from Guildford to Waterloo Station. The walk from Newlands Corner to Guildford would have been strenuous – it is three or four miles at least – although there was in 1926 a penny bus which came over the ridge at breakfast time, to take people into the town to work. We do not know how Agatha made that journey but she did remember that, on arriving at Waterloo, she had a cup of coffee in the buffet. She also recalled that, though she had blood on her face and was dressed only in a skirt and cardigan, no one seemed to notice. At Waterloo she saw a poster advertising the spa at Harrogate. Her arm was hurting and she therefore concluded that she must be on her way to Harrogate for treatment. This was a reasonable deduction. Posters promoting Harrogate’s therapeutic attractions were prominently displayed in the London railway termini in the nineteen-twenties.

  Agatha recalled taking a taxi to Whiteley’s, where she bought a coat, a small case and some night things. She not only had money from the small cheque which Carlo had cashed for her earlier in the week but also several hundred pounds in a money belt concealed around her waist. In her anxious state she had evidently been taking to extremes her grandmother’s advice that she should always have a hidden supply of ready cash for emergencies.

  Agatha had then taken a train to Harrogate, either the Pullman leaving King’s Cross at 11.15 a.m. or the 11.45 a.m. from St Pancras. In the nineteen-twenties Harrogate was a fashionable spa. It was frequented not only by people who had made or enlarged fortunes in the provinces and who wished simultaneously to spend their money, pamper their health and be smart, but also by those who were smart already – the local nobility, the occasional foreign duke or duchess and the regular royal relation. The names of visitors, together with the amusements that were available, were published weekly in the Herald, which included in the lists published on December 5th and December 15th ‘Mrs Neele of Cape Town’. Harrogate, in fact, resembled the spa in which Archie and Agatha had stayed at the end of their holiday in the Pyrenees. Indeed, it was not unlike Torquay, transplanted to the North.

  At Harrogate station there were not only cabs available but the larger hotels, of which the Hydro was one, sent their
own motors to meet the London trains. The Hydropathic Hotel, from its name alone, would attract someone who obviously needed restoration. It was one of Harrogate’s biggest and grandest hotels, set in ornamental gardens near the centre of the town, just above the Pump Room. Smart though it might be, the Hydro was nonetheless most respectable. For one thing, it was practically teetotal. ‘Table wine’ was available in the evenings for consumption with dinner but the therapeutic purpose of the hotel was emphasised by the fact that in the entrance hall, by the stairs, was an apparatus dispensing health-giving Harrogate water, of which glasses were brought to the bedrooms by a page. A resident nurse arranged courses of treatment – the Turkish Bath, cold douche, Vichy Bath, and so on – at the Royal Baths or in the hotel itself. The Hydro was comfortable but not racy. The maids were strictly disciplined; they lived in a dormitory, dressed soberly and worked long hours. In the public rooms the guests were entertained by Harry Codd’s band, which played in the Palm Court at tea-time and after dinner in the evening, excepting Sundays. The dance music was up-to-date – the repertoire included the Charleston, along with more sedate dances – and at the end of the evening guests could waltz to ‘The Blue Danube’. In charge of these proceedings was ‘a lady entertainer’, a combined chaper-one, host and guide. She would arrange parties for bridge, encourage visitors to dance (very decorously; a pair of unaccompanied women might be persuaded to take part in the Lancers) and pass on particular requests to the band. She herself also sang and played the piano while Harry Codd and his men ate their sandwiches and surreptitiously stole off for a bottle of beer.

  Agatha arrived at the Hydro just before the Christmas season began. There were few guests in addition to the permanent residents and she had no trouble in obtaining a room. She was put in number five, a small room, with a basin and one easy chair. Agatha had arrived with only a dressing-case. She was a reserved and unobtrusive guest, breakfasting quietly in her room on half a grapefruit and ‘split toast’ (Melba toast), then the latest diet for those who wished not to gain weight. When her breakfast was brought, Agatha was to be found reclining against the pillows, her hands covering her face and chin, as if to hide herself or conceal a bruise. After two or three days the maid who brought Agatha’s breakfast asked her how she felt, saying she had been looking rather tired. Agatha had replied that she was tired and that she had some trouble ‘but I’ll have to sort it out.’ Her reticent nature would have prevented her from chattering to the maid, who had only one glimpse of her private affairs, when she was asked to pass a handkerchief from Agatha’s dressing-case. Beside the handkerchief was a photograph. Agatha told the maid that this was her ‘little girl’, but no more.

  As a result of her sessions in Harley Street, Agatha remembered playing bridge with her fellow-guests and discussing the disappearance of the missing novelist. After some time she began to worry that her money would not last indefinitely and that there were no letters. She placed an advertisement in The Times, which appeared on Saturday, December 11th, asking that: ‘Friends and relatives of Theresa Neele, late of South Africa, please communicate,’ and giving a box number. Agatha could not produce a reason for calling herself Theresa Neele, except that Theresa was the name of a woman she knew who lived in Torquay and Neele was the name of the woman Archie loved. The newspapers had also reported that Harrods, in Knights-bridge, had received a letter from a Mrs Christie asking that a diamond ring, left for repair, should be posted to Yorkshire. The letter was not kept and Agatha did not speak of it.

  Those who observed Agatha during her stay at the Hydro were struck by her reserved and inconspicuous behaviour. Reg Schofield, who as pianist to the band sat sideways, had a different view of the hotel drawing-rooms and he could see Agatha sitting quietly in a corner in the afternoons, doing crosswords, and in the evening retiring to the shadowy part of the conservatory. Contrary to later newspaper reports, she on no occasion played the piano or sang in public. In the afternoon there was no singing in the Palm Court; in the evening the ‘lady entertainer’ did not encourage guests to usurp her own role.

  The Mail had published a photograph of ‘the missing novelist’, and one of the chambermaids, noting the similarity between ‘Mrs Neele’s’ handbag and that in the picture, pointed out the resemblance to Mrs Taylor, the manageress, who felt that an hotel’s staff should be discreet and advised them to say nothing. Bob Tappin, the drummer, and Bob Leeming, who played the saxophone, decided that the quiet lady’s likeness to Mrs Christie was too close to be ignored. Harry Codd, the band’s only professional member, refused to pass on possibly ill-founded suspicions to the police; he had to safeguard his own and the hotel’s reputation. Mrs Tappin and Mrs Leeming were next consulted, coming to the hotel to see what they thought. Their husbands did not take their suspicions to the newspapers (thereby forgoing a reward of £100) but to the police, who refused to commit themselves until Colonel Christie had succeeded, or not, in identifying his wife.

  According to the bandsmen, who later received silver pencils as a token of Archie’s thanks for their discretion, the reunion was ‘subdued’ and undramatic. The first public announcement of Agatha’s discovery came in the Yorkshire Post, which had two lines under Stop Press. During the course of the evening, from eight o’clock onwards, the press descended on the Hydro, commandeering the telephones and filling the public rooms. Mr and Mrs Taylor, appalled at the invasion, tried to protect the Christies. The staff were instructed to be wary – the chambermaids parried questions by saying they had only just come on duty – and great care was taken in accepting bookings for rooms. Archie had been installed in number ten, on the opposite side of the staircase to Agatha, but the press was encouraged to believe that Mr and Mrs Christie had taken a suite together. The Northern Editor of the Mail managed to book a room on the first floor, in which he sat up all night ‘in case they should escape’. The Mail also ordered a special train to stand by at Harrogate station. It was thought by younger and more innocent reporters that this was to transport copy to the South as quickly as possible; they were soon told that it was actually intended to carry Agatha to London, should she agree to give the newspaper an ‘exclusive’ account of her experiences. Nothing could have been less likely. At midnight the stationmaster telephoned to ask what should be done with the train, which, he said, was ‘huffing and puffing black smoke in a siding’. The Mail reporter consulted his editor in London. ‘Cancel it,’ he was ordered.

  Archie was disinclined to talk to the press and no reporter spoke to Agatha at any point, although at least one claimed to have done so. One journalist, taxed by his colleagues with writing a story based on a fictitious conversation, is said to have declared ingeniously that, even if Agatha denied having spoken to him, no one would believe her, since ‘she’s lost her memory, hasn’t she?’ Again, contrary to some press reports, Archie did not give a press conference. What happened was that Superintendent McDowell, a firm but sensible officer who got on well with the press, was asked by the frustrated reporters whether he could persuade Colonel Christie to speak to one of their number, whom they would delegate as their common representative. Archie reluctantly agreed and Kenyon, ‘the doyen of the Yorkshire Post’, was nominated. Archie came to the George Hotel, where Kenyon was quartered, but gave him only the prepared statement that Agatha was suffering from loss of memory. Any reports of other interviews were fabricated.

  By morning the journalists were desperate for more detail. Dick Ledbetter and a young assistant enterprisingly took themselves to the Hydro’s reception desk and photographed Agatha’s signature in the register. At half-past nine a landaulette drew up outside the entrance. Reporters flung themselves towards it. Some were draped over the bonnet; eight or nine photographers, including two from the Sketch, clustered on its enormous wings. The Mail’s photographers were more canny. One stayed with the car, while the other hung about the back of the hotel, until a second car pulled up at the goods and staff entrance. Agatha and Archie were bundled inside – and the Mail thus o
btained ‘the scoop picture’.

  Pursued to the station, the Christies boarded the train as the journalists followed, running across the tracks. At Leeds they were dogged by more reporters and photographers. The pictures showed Agatha in a ‘tubular dress and skirt and a cloche hat’; one reporter remembered her as shielding her face and as having remarkably attractive legs. Archie, he recalled, wore a Norfolk jacket and plus fours, ‘rather like Harold Macmillan; it struck me as quite a good outfit.’ Agatha was looking thin and pale. At Manchester the pursuers appeared again, to be shaken off only at the gates of Abney. The Mail succeeded in obtaining the ‘best’ photographs. They show Agatha looking hunted and afraid and, years later, when Rosalind was to see newspaper pictures of other bewildered women, their private unhappiness exposed to public view, she was to remember how her mother looked when they were reunited. Agatha did not recognise Rosalind. She was kind but somehow absent, not like a mother embracing a daughter. Something strange had obviously happened.

  Gaps remain in the story. No one knows why Agatha fled from Styles late on the night of December 3rd. We can only suppose that, utterly distraught, she felt she must get away. Nor do we know how she spent the time between leaving home at about 11 p.m. and being helped with her car at six-twenty the next morning. She might have gone in search of Carlo, or started for Beverley, forgetting that she had cancelled the booking and frantic to be on her way. She might have driven to London and back, or meandered wildly around the countryside. Perhaps she drove towards Dorking because she had been that way earlier in the day. We do not know why Agatha took with her the few things she packed into the dressing-case. The arbitrariness of the assortment – a nightgown, some clothes and shoes, an out-of-date driving licence – has suggested to some that these were carefully assembled ‘red herrings’, with the driving licence added as a means of identification. But these bits and pieces might equally well indicate that, in a dazed and irrational state, Agatha had vaguely stuffed into a case the sort of things people do take when they suddenly leave a house, the bizarre and random accumulation of a nightmare. Nor do we know what Agatha’s intentions were. There are those who believe she wished to kill herself and who point to the driving licence as the identifying clue she would leave behind. On the other hand, it is odd that someone with that intention should also pack a nightgown. We simply do not know what Agatha planned to do, if indeed she had any plans at all.