Agatha Christie

by Laura Thompson

  Shortly after Mrs Christie had left home a letter from her was received by a brother of Colonel Christie stating that she was in ill health and was going to a Yorkshire spa, which, apparently, is precisely what she did. So all that can be said now is that various people have had a good run for someone else’s money.

  This is the sublime joke about the Agatha Christie ‘disappearance’. Separate the intention from the effect, and it is clear that there was no disappearance. At least, not an intentional one. Certainly there was never any intention to disappear for eleven days. It just looked that way, to the people who were searching so hard for Agatha they were blind to the fact that she had told them where she was. As the Man in the Street so unarguably put it, Agatha did exactly what she had said she was going to do; and more fool the police and the press for not having believed her.

  So here, in plain text, is Agatha’s story. She drove away from Styles with the vague intention of looking for Archie, or killing herself, or both. She then drifted into a highly particular state of mind: she was in command of herself, to the extent that she could plan and think and function, and yet the self that she commanded was no longer really there. She had not killed herself, yet in a sense she had died.

  This ghost Agatha created her pathetic faux puzzle of the abandoned car overhanging the quarry, the case, the driving licence, the fur coat: the clues. And she sought to do the one thing that might reclaim her husband. She absconded, in the belief that giving Archie a weekend of agony, making him fear that she was dead, awakening his buried feelings, might restore him to her. She appealed to the one person who could intercede on her behalf – her brother-in-law – and told him that she was going away to Yorkshire, making it plain that she was unwell and unhappy. Her hope was that Campbell would receive her letter on Monday, 6 December, get in touch with Archie, and make him go and find her. ‘Mrs Neele’ was another clue, both a sign of her presence and a prick to Archie’s conscience.

  Yet to explicate is, in the end, to confuse. What Agatha did made sense, and yet it made no sense. That is why the two most familiar ‘solutions’ to the disappearance are not just wrong, they are meaningless. Agatha did not lose her memory, as the official line had it for many years. Nor did she plan a set-up, as certain commentators have cynically insisted. The truth lies somewhere between those two theories, in the realm of ambiguity, in limbo; like the consciousness of its creator, whose identity slipped away into the dark sky as she walked down to the quarry.

  But of course, it was not only Agatha who wrote the story of her disappearance. Alongside her version was the far more familiar one created by the police and the press. There were two stories, in fact, the private and the public, and in the divergence between them lies infinite fascination. Agatha drifted silently beneath the beech trees while, as it were in another universe, the busy people of England pondered her fate.

  She always saw the story as a private one, right up to the moment that she was found at the Harrogate Hydro. Considering how famous her name was to become, it is hard to realise how little known it was at the start of these events (the Daily Mail of 6 December referred to the disappearance of ‘A Woman Novelist’, a ‘writer of detective stories’ including Who Killed Ackroyd?).5 She was an entirely private person and, even in her right mind, she would never have dreamed that her actions would become public property. Thus it was that she believed she could abandon a car over a quarry and cause serious alarm to just one person: her husband. The idea that her behaviour might reverberate beyond her own circle would simply not have occurred to her. She was not that kind of person.

  Nor would it have reverberated – at least, not to the extent that it did – had it not been for the attitude of the police; or, to be precise, the attitude of Deputy Chief Constable Kenward of the Surrey Constabulary, a man who fell in love with his theory about the case, and with the attentions of the journalists who wanted to hear it.

  It was around 11 a.m. on Saturday, 4 December, when Kenward first learned that a car – established as Agatha’s property by the driving-licence left inside it – had been found at Newlands Corner. In an interview given after the event to the Surrey Advertiser, Kenward said: ‘It seemed probable that. . . the occupant or occupants had met with disaster.’ As Agatha lived in Sunningdale, the Berkshire Constabulary was informed, and the two forces were then obliged to work together. Therein lay a difficulty. From the first, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward was convinced that Agatha was dead and that her body lay near the site of her car. Superintendent Goddard of Berkshire was equally certain that she was alive.

  Goddard was a sensible man, whose instinct told him that an emotional upheaval had caused Agatha to take flight. Shorn of complications, this was pretty much what had happened. However chief responsibility for the case lay with Surrey, so Kenward’s will prevailed. The case of Agatha’s disappearance, which could have been handled with tact and intelligence, became wildly overblown: a focus for nation-wide publicity, extensive press involvement and numerous searches of the area around Newlands Corner. Obviously Kenward was sincere in his belief that Agatha was dead; but the less likely it became that her body would be found in the environs of her car, the more dogged he became in his desire to be proved right.

  ‘What have I always told you? Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory – let the theory go.’ The words of Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but Kenward – like most people with ideas about this case – ignored them. Rather as in the investigation of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, which in the late 1970s became fixated upon a hoax tape-recording and thus missed the culprit as he passed repeatedly through police interview rooms, Kenward went in such single-minded pursuit of his own ideas that he ignored the one real clue to Agatha’s whereabouts. ‘It was the clear duty of the police, from the point of view of humanity alone, to endeavour to find Mrs Christie if she was wandering about, out of her mind because of nervous collapse, in the woods or surroundings of Newlands Corner,’ said Kenward to the Surrey Advertiser. ‘Having failed in this direction, it was again the duty of the police to satisfy themselves that it was not a matter of foul play, and that no crime had been committed.’

  This was the nub of it: Kenward believed there was a strong possibility that Agatha had been murdered by her husband. That was why he failed to pursue the clue of the letter that had been sent to Campbell Christie. Instead of taking its contents at face value, and accepting that its postmark – ‘9.45 a.m., London SWI’ – almost certainly proved that Agatha had been alive on Saturday morning, he clung to his own theory. He decided that the letter had either not been posted by Agatha herself, or that she had posted it in London before returning to Newlands Corner. There was, therefore, insufficient investigation of Agatha’s statement that she was going to a ‘Yorkshire spa’. The problem was that the letter had been destroyed – although its envelope had not – and there was only Campbell’s word for its contents. Kenward might have believed that Campbell was shielding his brother by lying about what was in the letter; or he might have thought that Archie himself had posted it.

  From quite early on, the newspapers knew what was in Kenward’s mind. They sensed that he was itching to cuff the hands of that arrogant Colonel Christie. Several other theories were put forward in their pages, but it was the possibility of wife-murder that kept the story bubbling so fiercely. It has led some commentators to suggest that Agatha had wanted Archie to be suspected or even arrested. This is an entirely absurd notion – Agatha was trying to get her husband back, not to alienate him for ever – but, in order to see this, it is again necessary to separate intention from effect. Agatha meant no such thing to happen to Archie; nevertheless, it became a very real possibility. As one of the journalists who reported on the case, Ritchie Calder of the Daily News, later wrote: ‘If her body had been found in the Silent Pool, say, I have no doubt from what I knew of the police attitude, that Colonel Christie would have been held, on circumstantial evidence.’

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p; So it was that, because of Kenward in the first instance, then because of the newspapers, Agatha’s private story became public. The police and the press were entangled in a folie à deux, which led to a deeply personal crisis becoming the property of the nation. Anyone who believes that an intrusive and judgemental media is a recent phenomenon should look at the reports of Agatha’s disappearance: back in 1926, newspapers were making exactly the same assumptions about the hunger of their readers for sensation, disaster and scandal. But the press cannot really be blamed. The bones that Kenward held out were too juicy to resist: it was, and remains, a cracking story.

  It started quite small, on Monday, 6 December, alongside news of the death of Claude Monet. By the next day it was the stuff of headlines. It was reported with a decent level of accuracy, which would later be compromised, as newspapers became competitive and claimed exclusive information for themselves. On Tuesday, the seventh, however, certain facts were established.

  Agatha’s Morris had been found at Newlands Corner, a vast expanse of the North Downs that stretches away from the A25, near Guildford, towards the village of Albury. The car was found about three hundred yards down the hill, at the edge of a quarry, with its bonnet jammed in a bush. It was close to one of the paths – now called a byway – that leads from the top of Newlands Corner. About half-way down this path becomes a rutted track, Water Lane, which passes to the left of the quarry, then leads out towards Albury. The car was seen on Saturday, 4 December, by a gypsy boy named Best, who had been walking along Albury’s main street at around 8 a.m.

  In 1926 Newlands Corner was far more open than it is today. There was no barrier, as there is now, between the main road and the sloping grassland, and drivers did occasionally career off on to the downs. A good many trees are now planted across the hills but there was little, then, to impede a car’s descent. Nevertheless, Agatha’s car was a long way down, and as there were no signs of the brakes having been applied it seemed unlikely that she had skidded there by accident.

  A little after eight a man named Frederick Dore, who worked with cars, examined the Morris more closely. According to most reports, he found it with a flat battery and the brakes off. He was variously quoted as to how the car had got there: in the Surrey Advertiser he said it was as though ‘the car had been allowed to run down the hill’ and in the Daily Sketch, more strongly, ‘It appeared to me that it must have been given a push at the top of the hill.’ But the car had suffered very little damage, considering its extraordinary position, and was later capable of being driven to a garage on the Epsom Road. It contained around two gallons of petrol; also Agatha’s dressing-case, some items of clothing including a fur coat, and an out-of-date driving licence.

  In some reports, Dore also made reference to a gypsy girl, whom he met nearby on Saturday morning, who said that she had heard a car at about midnight being driven along the top of Newlands Corner. He walked up the hill to the refreshment kiosk run by a Mr Alfred Luland, who was given charge of the car while Dore went to the nearby Newlands Corner Hotel to telephone the police (Luland told the Daily News that he was certain the brakes were on, adding that it was ‘difficult to see how it managed to run down the hill’).

  The newspapers also reported a sighting of Agatha herself. Early in the investigation a man came forward to say that he had started a car at around 6.20 a.m. on Saturday the fourth, near Newlands Corner, for a woman answering her description. This man was named first as Ernest Cross, then as Edward McAllister – a discrepancy that was never resolved – and there were inevitable deviations within the reporting of his story. The Daily Express described the woman he had helped as having ‘hoar-frost’ in her hair, and putting her hands to her head ‘as if in distress’. The Surrey Advertiser, who talked to McAllister direct (and whose reporting was generally excellent), wrote that ‘The woman did not seem distraught, or particularly distressed, but seemed a little strange, which he put down to the worry of the car.’ It was, indeed, almost as though there were two different men involved, since ‘Cross’ described the car radiator as ‘quite hot’ and square-shaped (Agatha’s Morris had a bull-nosed radiator) while McAllister stated that it was stone cold. In every report the woman is said to have worn no hat or coat, and to have driven off in a direction away from Newlands Corner.

  At this point the newspaper reports would have caused readers to believe that Agatha had killed herself. ‘Hatless Woman Met on the Downs’, was the headline in the Express, giving an impression of a semi-dressed lunatic who had wandered through the night to her doom. Emphasis was given to the proximity of the abandoned car to the Silent Pool, which the police were draining and which was described (rightly) as an extremely creepy place. From the first, and not just because of what Agatha did for a living, the case was treated as a dark and sinister mystery.

  The big story on Wednesday, the eighth, was the letter that Agatha had sent to Campbell Christie. ‘SAID SHE WAS GOING FOR WEEKEND VISIT TO A YORKSHIRE SPA’ was the headline in the Daily Sketch. Then, dismissively: ‘No evidence that she went there’. How could the story have so simple a solution? With regard to the SWI postmark – which also presented a threat to the ‘Corpse at Newlands Corner’ scenario – it was suggested that Agatha might not have posted the letter herself, or that she might somehow have arranged for its posting when she stayed at her club, the Forum, on the night of 1 December. ‘How and by whom it was posted in London is a question that has not yet been elucidated,’ wrote the Surrey Advertiser. Never was there any suggestion that the letter might be taken at face value: it was merely another snort of a drug to which police and press had become quickly addicted.

  For example, it was reported that Agatha had visited her local chemist in the past couple of weeks to get sleeping pills, and that she had had a conversation with him about the poison hyoscine,6 saying: ‘I should never commit suicide by violent means when there is such a drug as hyoscine available.’ Some of the papers also stated that Agatha might have been in possession of a revolver.

  But although the strong implication was that Agatha was dead, the newspapers also printed reports of several sightings. Most of these were in the area of Newlands Corner. Mrs Kitching, who lived near Albury, had ‘met a strange woman on the road at noon on Saturday’, whom she was convinced was Mrs Christie. A cowman had seen her car at around 4 a.m. on Saturday, the fourth, driving through the nearby village of Shere; a Mr Brown offered her a lift at about 11.15 a.m. on the same day (‘She seemed to be in the kind of mood when she did not care what happened’); and a Mr Richards reported seeing her on Saturday afternoon in a parked car, up a lane a few miles from Guildford, with a man sitting beside her.

  On Monday Agatha was seen in Plumstead, south-east London, when she burst into the house of a Mr Daniels waving a pound note and demanded change. On Tuesday she was seen by a Mrs Bisshop boarding a bus at Piccadilly and alighting at Bayswater, ‘in a very distressed condition’.

  Meanwhile, on Wednesday the eighth, the Harrogate Herald printed its weekly list of visitors to the town. The name of ‘Mrs Neele, Cape Town’ appeared as a guest at the Harrogate Hydro.

  The police had, of course, taken some note of Agatha’s letter to Campbell. A small paragraph in the Daily Express of 9 December referred to them making ‘careful inquiries’ in Harrogate. ‘It was reported that an unknown woman, about the same age as Mrs Christie, went to the Royal Baths yesterday’: the one true sighting among the mass of false ones. Journalists from the Express and the Daily Chronicle did the rounds of the Harrogate hotels but, finding no woman registered under Agatha’s name, concluded that she was not there.

  Yet the clue that might have found her was published on the ninth, with the first mention of ‘Miss Nield’, as the Westminster Gazette called her: ‘the only other person’ at the house in Godalming where Archie had spent the previous weekend. There were also reports of police interviews with the Christies’ household staff. ‘I understand’, wrote the Gazette’s Special Correspondent, ‘that there is “no t
ruth in the rumour” that there were “high words” between them at the breakfast table.’

  In other words the Special Correspondent believed that there had been high words; and had a pretty good idea as to what those words had been about. The press had the scent by now. They knew what Kenward thought about Archie and they knew why he thought it: the story had acquired a luscious new dimension. Having been an object of considerable pity (‘driven to distraction by the mystery’, as the Mail wrote on the seventh), Archie was becoming more like an object of suspicion. He had requested, and obtained, a police guard at Styles, in order to protect both himself and his daughter (a policeman accompanied Rosalind to school every day) from the jabbering attentions of the press. Yet he was unable to resist talking to them. ‘I am in a bad state of health,’ he told the Daily Express, ‘and suffering from the anxiety caused by the continued lack of news. Frankly, I cannot stand it much longer.’ To the Evening News he said even more: ‘I left home on Friday to spend the weekend with friends. Where I stayed I am not prepared to state. I have told the police. I do not want my friends to be dragged into this. It is my business alone. I have been badgered and pestered like a criminal, and all I want is to be left alone.’

  The next day, the tenth, brought extensive reports and photographs of the searches for Agatha at Newlands Corner: ‘500 Police Search for Mrs Christie’ was the headline in the Daily Mail. Less sensationally, The Times reported that nearly 250 police had taken part in the search, assisted by volunteers including Archie Christie. With him was Agatha’s dog Peter (or ‘Patsy’, as some of the papers called him). Two civilian aeroplanes were used to scour the area. Earlier in the week Albury Mill Pond had been drained, and the beagles of the Guildford and Shere Hunt had been used by Kenward as an unofficial search party. Nothing had been found, except for a hoax message – dutifully reported in the newspapers – which read: ‘Ask Candle Lanch. He knows more about the Silent Pool than . . .’