Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days

by Jared Cade

  ‘If Mrs Christie’s mind became hysterical she may have gone wandering over the country, on and on, with the false strength of the half-demented, until she dropped in some spot miles away from where she is being sought now.’

  On the morning of Sunday the 12th the news coverage of the disappearance shows that the author was the country’s most talked-about woman. People arriving at Newlands Corner were confronted by newspaper placards from Reynolds’s Illustrated News advertising a three-month serialization of The Murder on the Links: ‘Missing Novelist’s Finest Serial Begins Today.’ Two points of considerable interest for the public were the chalk pit into which Agatha’s car had almost plunged and the Silent Pool some quarter of a mile away.

  Of all the visitors to the Silent Pool the one who was to become the most famous was Dorothy L. Sayers. She looked around for a few moments, then announced in her robust, forthright manner, ‘No, she isn’t here.’ She later incorporated aspects of her visit to the scene of the disappearance into her third detective novel, Unnatural Death, published the following year, in which not one but two women are found missing from an abandoned car on downland which she relocated to the south coast. Ironically, the registration number of the abandoned car corresponded in real life to her own Ner-a-car, and passages from the book are reminiscent of reports from Sunday the 12th.

  ‘Reporters swarmed down upon Crow’s Beach like locusts – the downs near Shelly Head were like a fair with motors, bicycles and parties on foot, rushing out to spend a happy week-end amid surroundings of mystery and bloodshed.’

  The keenness of the public to find Agatha was demonstrated by the fact that a large contingent of helpers turned up at Newlands Corner before the official start of the search at 9.30 a.m. Under Deputy Chief Constable Kenward’s direction fifty-three search parties, each under a police officer and averaging between thirty and forty people, were mustered at Newlands Corner. Before the parties moved off he appealed to them to carry out a thorough search, not merely a perfunctory one, since he was convinced that Agatha would be found somewhere in the district. After the early groups had started off, many more volunteers arrived by car, omnibus, motor cycle and bicycle. Members of the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club were on hand to direct traffic, and responsible individuals were selected to guide new parties over the downs. Special omnibus services from Guildford and other neighbouring towns also brought their quota of people to swell the throng that gathered on the hilltop.

  Among the early arrivals was a well-known breeder and exhibitor of bloodhounds who brought along three of her dogs. It was not expected that they would pick up the scent of the missing novelist after so long, but it was thought that if Agatha had wandered off and had fallen down from exhaustion the hounds might locate her. At the suggestion of Deputy Chief Constable Kenward they were first taken along the old chalk road which runs towards Dorking and afterwards allowed to explore a track in the vicinity of the Silent Pool.

  The public had its first thrill shortly before noon when rumour spread that a number of articles, including a black handbag and an attaché case, had been discovered at a lonely spot off the beaten track near Shere and were being brought by car to Newlands Corner. But it was soon established the articles were of no assistance to the inquiry. Similar discoveries were made throughout the afternoon; this was hardly surprising since Newlands Corner was a popular picnic location owing to the natural beauty of the landscape and had a notorious reputation for articles being stolen from parked cars. It was common practice for thieves to steal the contents of handbags and then dispose of them in the undergrowth.

  An unfortunate aspect of the search was that by mid-afternoon many onlookers were drawn to the hilltop through idle curiosity, with no intention of taking part, and their presence hampered the genuine volunteers. There was an even greater carnival atmosphere than on the previous weekend: anticipation, excitement, high spirits and frivolity were as much in evidence as determination to find the missing woman. There was as much speculation over whether the missing novelist’s body would be found as there was over whether her husband would join in the search. Although Reynolds’s Illustrated News had reminded amateur sleuths that Agatha had dedicated The Murder on the Links ‘To my husband, a fellow enthusiast for detective stories, and to whom I am indebted for much helpful advice and criticism’, Archie was conspicuously absent. He spent the day at Styles where he was observed in the garage washing his Delage with the help of his daughter Rosalind.

  Alfred Luland’s refreshment kiosk, together with the Newlands Corner Hotel, did a roaring trade. How expansive the hunt for Agatha became is attested by the use of horses to carry instructions to the outlying flanks. Albert Raven, a fourteen-year-old apprentice motor mechanic who took part in the search on horseback, recalled: ‘There was an enormous number of people around, the press was everywhere, and it was the number one topic of the day.’

  During the search the public set out under police direction from three other major assembly points: Coal Kitchen Lane near Shere; Clandon Water Works on the Leatherhead to Guildford main road; and One Tree Hill on Pewley Downs on the eastern outskirts of Guildford. Innumerable special constables assisted with operations. Large numbers of the public, preferring to rely on their own intuition, set out independently. One party walked all the way along the summit of the downs from Dorking, a distance of nine miles, searching the woods and bushes that bordered the little used track. Another party, who decided to beat the common and woods around St Martha’s Chapel, found that in many places the bracken was taller than a man.

  Meanwhile, having obtained a glove of Agatha’s, Sherlock Holmes’s creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave it to a medium called Horace Leaf. ‘I gave him no clue at all as to what I wanted or to whom the article belonged,’ the famous writer later recalled. ‘He never saw it until I laid it on the table at the moment of consultation, and there was nothing to connect either it or me with the Christie case . . . He at once got the name Agatha. “There is trouble connected with this article. The person who owns it is half dazed and half purposeful. She is not dead as many think. She is alive. You will hear of her, I think, next Wednesday.”’

  The hunt at Newlands Corner ended that evening as a mist fell, and a flare was lit to guide those searchers who had lost their bearings. Police scouts were sent out to collect stragglers, while a deflated and exhausted Deputy Chief Constable Kenward issued a statement to the press asking journalists to thank the public for its cooperation. In an earlier statement that day he had made a point of saying that anyone who claimed Agatha had staged her disappearance was doing her a great injustice.

  Around eleven o’clock that night in Harrogate, an exclusive northern spa town half-way between London and Edinburgh, two local bandsmen went to the local police to report that a woman resembling the missing novelist was staying at the hotel in which their band regularly played. They had, in fact, been suspicious of the hotel guest for some days, as a consequence of having their attention drawn to her by a keen-eyed chambermaid, but had done nothing about it until their wives had taken an interest in the matter.

  Although the lateness of the hour precluded the Harrogate police from being able to investigate that night, since the woman suspected of being Agatha had already retired to her room, the two bandsmen had set in motion a chain of events which, over the next two days, would finally resolve the question to which the whole country was seeking an answer.

  Chapter Twelve

  A Call for Divers

  On Monday the 13th the news coverage revealed that the outcome of the Great Sunday Hunt had been failure. The estimates in the press over how many people had taken part ranged from 2,000 to 15,000.

  Over the weekend the Daily Mail had followed up a suspected sighting which had taken place late on the night of the disappearance in a lane near Pyrford, seven miles north-east of Guildford. A Mr Richards had seen a car similar to Agatha’s ‘eventually driven away towards Newlands Corner’, followed by a dark-red four-
seater. The following day the dark-red car had been seen in the lane with a man and a woman inside. While the Daily Mail’s disclosure gave rise to speculation that Agatha might have gone off with an unknown man and spent Saturday hiding in the lane, there was no reason any astute person should have considered it likely that she was having an extra-marital affair, because one of the witnesses, Mr Fauld of Warren Farm, had described the woman as having ‘fairish bobbed hair’ and wearing a ‘smart blue coat’. Moreover, since half of all the cars on the road in the 1920s were Morris Cowleys the similarity of the woman’s car to Agatha’s did not offer much in the way of a promising lead.

  Just how accurate was Mr Fauld’s description of the female? Might this have been the woman who stopped Edward McAlister in Trodd’s Lane on his way to work in the dark at 6.20 on the morning of Saturday the 4th and asked him to start her car before she drove off in the direction of Guildford?

  The Daily Sketch disclosed that a well-known medium in Guildford and her spirit guide Maisie, ‘a 12-year-old African girl, tribe unknown’, had asked to be given something belonging to Agatha in an attempt to locate her. The Daily Sketch told its readers that the request had been met when an unnamed ‘London journalist’ (in fact the Daily Sketch’s own reporter) had supplied the medium with a used powder-puff that he said belonged to Agatha:

  ‘The powder-puff worked like a charm. As soon as the medium went into a trance ‘Maisie’ took command . . . Sensational claims were made by the medium, who afterwards described Mrs Christie’s fate as a tragedy almost too terrible to speak about, and suggested that the Black Pond should be dragged.’

  In recounting this story and emphasizing that the powder-puff had never belonged to or been seen by Mrs Christie, the Daily Sketch virtuously asserted that it was ‘animated by the sole desire to prevent the public from being misled by a too-ready faith in the supernatural powers of mediums’.

  In recent years former Daily News reporter Ritchie Calder has mistakenly recollected that the clairvoyant consulted by the Daily Sketch claimed that the body would be found in a log-house. None the less, he has told an entertaining story regarding the discovery of a summer retreat in Clandon Wood, involving himself and the Westminster Gazette’s Trevor Allen, which gives insight into the journalists’ rampaging imaginations:

  ‘We peered through the front windows and saw, silhouetted against the rear window, the shape of a body lying on a cot. It proved to be a bedroll. Nevertheless, the house, obviously closed up for the winter, had been recently occupied. Trevor Allen in great excitement discovered a “bottle of opium”. Actually, it was ipecacuanha and opium, in discreet proportions, used in the treatment of chronic diarrhoea. Accepting our wild goose chase, we went back to Guildford and told our colleagues, as an amusing story, about our adventure. They immediately swarmed off to the clearing. One picture-paper reporter took a barmaid of a Guildford hotel with him. He scattered face-powder on the doorstep, and got her to step in it. Next day the shoe print appeared with the caption “Is this Mrs Christie’s?” Another used the “oppi” without the “ipec”.’

  On Monday the 13th many of the tabloids now indulged in their most fanciful theory to date: that Agatha might be living in London disguised as a man. While it seems extraordinary that the press could have advanced such a ludicrous suggestion, the public was not inclined to dismiss it. After all, had not Ethel Le Neve been dressed as a man when Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Walter Dew had arrested her and Dr Crippen?

  In apparent support of this outrageous theory, the afternoon edition of the Westminster Gazette revealed that Inspector Butler of the Berkshire Constabulary had left Ascot earlier in the day to make inquiries in London. While he did indeed travel up to London that day, the police officer’s purpose was to visit Scotland Yard in order to liaise with the police there and was in no way influenced by the melodramatic speculations in the press.

  Publicity seekers continued to contact the newspapers claiming to have seen Agatha in places as diverse as Torquay, Plymouth and Rhyl, and this had led to the police in these districts being drawn in to the search. An omnibus driver and conductor were both adamant that Agatha had travelled on their vehicle between Haslemere and Hindhead, and the manager of the Royal Huts Hotel in Hindhead also insisted she had lunched at his establishment on the weekend. The confusion arising from the suspected sightings was made worse because none of the women involved came forward to correct the cases of mistaken identity.

  Meanwhile Stanley Bishop of the Daily Express (who had heckled Deputy Chief Constable Kenward for not searching all the pools on the Downs) had persuaded the London diving firm Siebe, Gorman and Company to participate on a voluntary basis in the search (in addition to supplying interviews and posing for photographs for the press). This led to the Surrey police being erroneously blamed for the expense of hiring divers. In conversation with the Home Office, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward later gave one of its officials, Arthur Dixon, to understand that ‘all talk of divers, aeroplanes and other stunts were merely press invention’, but this told only part of the story. When the press discovered that Stanley Bishop had engaged the divers, they laughed at him because many of the pools were so shallow that the divers would have had to crawl about on all fours.

  The London Evening News was one of several newspapers to report Agatha’s disappearance alongside that of a woman called Una Crowe who had gone missing from her London home on Saturday the 11th and was found drowned on Sunday the 19th. While there was no connection between the two disappearances, such editorial juxtaposing undoubtedly gave the two cases full prominence – and led some readers to wonder if there was a link.

  Unknown to the press and its readers, the West Riding police had spent Monday investigating the claims of the two Harrogate bandsmen, Bob Tappin and Bob Leeming, and interviewing the staff at the hotel in the town where the guest suspected of being the missing author was staying.

  Bob Tappin’s widow, Nora, has since explained how she was the catalyst for the two Bobs going to the police on Sunday the 12th with their suspicions: ‘Bob and I and Bob Leeming and his wife Beatrice were together later that night. The two men were on about this woman they thought was Mrs Christie, and I said a bit cheekily, “If you don’t go to the police, I will.”’

  Rosie Asher, the chambermaid who originally alerted the two bandsmen to her suspicions, confided that she had first noticed the mysterious guest because of her unusual shoes with their large buckles and distinctive black handbag which boasted the latest in fashion accessories, a zip. Until then, Rosie had only seen the handbags with this sort of fastener in London magazines. Since her retirement from the Harrogate Hydro in the mid-1970s Rosie has explained why she did not go to the police herself:

  ‘I didn’t dare let on at the time. I suppose I was one of the first to know (it was Agatha Christie), but it was more than my job was worth to get involved. I just went about my normal business. She had only one small case but said her luggage was coming along later. I though it all a bit odd. I was putting some newspapers on a table when I saw some pictures of this person. I noticed right away that she had unusual-looking shoes and handbag. I thought: I’ve seen those somewhere before. Then it dawned on me.’

  Her lasting impression of Agatha from all those years ago was: ‘I do remember she liked dancing. She was often in the ballroom and was a most attractive woman.’

  After surreptitiously observing the mystery guest on Monday the 13th the West Riding police concluded that this was the woman for whom the whole country was looking, and they got in touch with Deputy Chief Constable Kenward that night. He, not believing in the substance of their claims, failed to pass on the information to the Berkshire police or to the household at Styles. He instead drew up plans to extend the search around Newlands Corner to forty square miles, starting on the Wednesday. No less than eighty members of the Aldershot Motor Cycling Club offered their assistance.

  On the morning of Tuesday the 14th the West Riding police once again contacted Dep
uty Chief Constable Kenward, requesting his help in establishing whether or not the hotel guest in question was the missing novelist. The result was that the policeman rang Styles around midday to ask Charlotte to travel north to identify the woman suspected of being her employer. The secretary declined on the grounds that she had to collect Rosalind from school and rang Archie at work in London. The information she passed on, while scant, convinced them both that his wife had almost certainly been located, and he caught the 1.40 p.m. train from King’s Cross.

  As a result of the tip-off, a large contingent of Fleet Street reporters had travelled by train to Harrogate late on the evening of Monday the 13th. Among them was Sidney Campion, late-night reporter for the Daily News. What was especially intriguing about this new lead was that the hotel guest suspected of being Agatha had registered as a Mrs Neele – the same surname as Archie’s mistress Nancy.

  It was the opinion of the press that the coincidence was too uncanny to ignore; after all, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But where exactly was the mystery female? Contradictory sources suggested she was staying at either the Cairn Hydro or the Harrogate Hydro. A discreet police cordon erected on the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th suggested it was the latter, but the journalists could not be sure. The police were being unusually tightlipped, declining to comment on the reason for the delay in telling the reporters what was going on and why they had not already approached the woman in question. Something unusual was happening and the press were quick to feel the tension.

  Rather than wait for statements from the police, the London Evening Standard decided to blow the whistle. It gained the Fleet Street scoop of the week by supplying accurate information on Agatha’s suspected whereabouts in its 2.30 p.m. edition, when it revealed that a woman staying at an unnamed hotel in Harrogate was awaiting identification by Colonel Christie, who was still some four hours away by train.