by Jared Cade
Former Police Constable Eric Boshier remembers her in the mid-1920s as a friendly, outgoing young woman, since his duties often took him to the Woodbridge Road Headquarters. She was a familiar sight around the police yard. He also maintains that Deputy Chief Constable Kenward did not have a secretary. He states there were no secretaries in the Surrey force in those days, least of all female ones, and he recalls that the first one was a male officer who learned shorthand shortly before the Second World War.
Gladys Kenward Dobson also told biographer Gwen Robyns that she burned all her father’s papers after he retired from the police force in 1931, including the ‘fourth letter’. She gave Gwen Robyns to understand that she had personally destroyed the letter Agatha had left for her secretary Charlotte, when, in fact, this letter, the only surviving document in the case, was held by the Berkshire police and subsequently returned to Charlotte after Agatha’s discovery.
Gladys Kenward Dobson always asserted that the strain of the case led to her father’s early death in 1932 at the age of fifty-six, although medical records show that his death was the result of a chronic degenerative condition of the heart. Her testimony must be in doubt, as no one close to Agatha has ever confirmed the existence of a ‘fourth letter’. Gladys Kenward Dobson made the same misleading claims to Kathleen Tynan about the letter. The policeman’s daughter felt deeply resentful of the attacks the press made on her father and repeatedly told Kathleen Tynan: ‘They crucified you in those days.’
Ironically, following the public release of the existing Home Office police records from the case, it was discovered that Deputy Chief Constable Kenward himself had tried to play down the scale of the search. Although he had given Arthur Dixon of the Home Office the impression in a telephone conversation on 9 February 1927 that the search of the Surrey Downs had only been carried out over two days, Kenward indirectly admitted in his report, written later that day, to having searched for five days. Yet one of his most loyal officers, Tom Roberts, who, after he had risen to the ranks from Police Constable to head of the Surrey CID years later, unwittingly revealed in his autobiography, Friends and Villains, that he had personally spent nine days on the search.
Understandably, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward’s report on 9 February made no reference to a ‘fourth letter’, since Agatha had never written to him. The police officer was quick to point out, however, the failure of the Berkshire police to locate Agatha: ‘As for prosecuting enquiries in other parts of the country, this was entirely a matter for the Berkshire police, in whose district Mrs Christie disappeared from.’ He went on to point out with justification that the number of police said to have been engaged had been greatly exaggerated and to confirm that he had received ‘invaluable assistance’ from the public and ‘innumerable special constables (unpaid)’.
Official police figures for 1926 show that the Surrey police force was made up of 356 regular police officers, and there can be no doubt that the press misinformed the public over the number of regular policeman engaged on the search, citing 600 in one instance. Tom Roberts came to his mentor’s defence in his autobiography by blaming Deputy Chief Constable Kenward’s most dismal hour on the sensational press coverage; he also understates the number of police involved. He mentions in his book the ‘many’ press cuttings in his career scrapbook in which photographs reveal no more than twelve policeman at any one time involved in the search of the downs. I have been shown his scrapbook at Camberley Police Station by a member of his family and the press cuttings alluding to Agatha’s disappearance amount to a total of three articles. Before he died Tom Roberts privately admitted that, to his knowledge, as many as 250 police officers were involved in the combing of the Surrey Downs.
Obviously Deputy Chief Constable Kenward found himself in an unenviable position after Agatha was located. He would have been open to criticism if he had not searched the Surrey Downs for the crime writer, especially if her body had later been found, but because he had actively sought to find her he became a target for criticism for having wasted people’s time and the taxpayers’ money.
Former Police Constable Eric Boshier has confirmed that Deputy Chief Constable Kenward later suffered for his conviction that her body would be found. ‘He made an ass over it. The word of mouth among police officers was that Kenward was convinced she would be found at Newlands Corner. The press had a good laugh at him when she was found elsewhere. But he solved a lot of cases in his time. He was a very good chap.’ Commentators who blame Deputy Chief Constable Kenward for turning the disappearance into a sensation forget that he took his orders from the Chief Constable of Surrey, Captain Sant. They also underplay the voracious interest of the press over which these two police officers had no control.
Additional confusion over why Agatha was in Harrogate has arisen from contradictory claims made by the literary critic Eric Hiscock about his former employer, Sir Godfrey Collins, who died in 1936. Although Sir Godfrey had instructed his publishing staff during the disappearance not to speculate to the press on Agatha’s possible whereabouts, Eric Hiscock discussed the issue in his 1970 autobiography, Last Boat to Folly Bridge: ‘I have always believed that Sir Godfrey knew, and that he wasn’t the least bit surprised when she was ultimately discovered holed up in a Harrogate hotel.’ However, on 19 April 1980, in The Bookseller, Eric Hiscock asserted that on the morning after Agatha had disappeared Sir Godfrey instructed him not to talk to the press about the matter because ‘she’s in Harrogate, resting’.
While Agatha certainly became a household name as a result of media interest in the disappearance, claims of an alleged ‘fourth letter’, together with ones of an ‘encounter’ and ‘prior knowledge’ of her whereabouts, have confused commentators ever since.
It is indicative of the tight hold Rosalind Hicks kept on her privacy that fans of her mother had to wait eight years after Agatha’s death before an authorized biography appeared in 1984. Rosalind’s approval of Janet Morgan’s biography was clear for all to see: not only was it released by Agatha’s publisher Collins but included precious photographs of her from the Christie family’s private albums.
Janet Morgan mistakenly claims that, on the night of the disappearance, Agatha left Styles around 11 p.m. Janet Morgan’s hypothesis is that Agatha may have missed a crucial gear change at Newlands Corner and incurred amnesia after running her car off the road. In her reconstruction, which incorrectly identifies the chalk pit into which the car almost plunged, Janet Morgan has Agatha travelling from Guildford in the direction of Shere. She suggests the missed gear change came after Agatha drove over the crest of the hill and that the car ended up on the left-hand side of the hill, about half-way down the A25 Dorking Road where there is a small quarry, which, according to Janet Morgan, is so steeply embanked that this seems to her to be the only place where a car might run off the road.
Water Lane is, however, on the right-hand side of the descending A25 Dorking Road, and the fact that Alfred Luland’s refreshment hut (which has since been replaced by Barn’s Café) is on the left-hand side of the road, along with the gravel pit described by Janet Morgan, makes her reconstruction impossible. After examining the car on the morning it was discovered the witness, Frederick Dore, crossed over the road to the refreshment hut to ask Alfred Luland to take charge of it while he told the police about his discovery.
Janet Morgan goes on to suggest that Agatha caught a penny bus into Guildford on the morning of Saturday the 4th and that after proceeding by train from Guildford to London she caught ‘either the Pullman leaving King’s Cross at 11.15 a.m. or the 11.45 a.m. from St Pancras’. Railway records show none of the trains departing for Harrogate left at these times.
It may well be that the immediate family allowed the biographer to infer that Agatha consulted a psychiatrist and a Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology at Oxford to recover her memory, but there is no evidence of this whatsoever. Janet Morgan also tells readers that Agatha left for the Canary Islands in February 1928, instead of five weeks after
the disappearance in January 1927. Her suggestion that Agatha may have disappeared because she was a ‘somnambule’, capable of hypnotizing herself at will, is no more credible than her contention that unrelated recent work in this field ‘suggests a useful line of thought for those who are interested in Agatha’s case’.
The disappearance has captured the imaginations of more people than anyone could ever have imagined, and it is perhaps ironic that in March 1993 the creators of the London Weekend Television series Agatha Christie’s Poirot unwittingly blended fiction with history. In a scenario that was never envisaged by his creator Hercule Poirot finds his investigation of ‘The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan’ hampered by the public – who are convinced he is the newspaper creation ‘Lucky Len’, for whom there is a ten-guinea reward for recognizing him from his newspaper photographs.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Confusing the Messenger With the Bad News
Despite the differences that had existed between them Rosalind Hicks was determined to honour her mother’s memory and literary reputation. Following Agatha’s death in January 1976, Rosalind and other members of the board of Agatha Christie Ltd feared that sales of her work would drop off dramatically without any new products to fuel the Christie phenomenon. A series of leaked memos from the UK and US offices of Agatha’s literary agents gives insight into how seriously the threat of diminishing sales and the potential dinting of her image were being taken by her minders. Two unauthorized books had appeared in America in 1975, The Mysterious World of Agatha Christie by Jeffrey Feinman and The Agatha Christie Quiz Book by Andy East, and this led to anger and apprehension that they might also be published in England. Agatha’s representatives wondered whether or not it would be possible to ‘kill’ these books in Britain and legal opinion was sought. Given the two books were innocuous and contained no damaging personal revelations, the tone of the correspondence between her advisers came close to paranoia, an indication of the tight hold the Christie estate was keeping on her business affairs. While it was acknowledged that the final say in all such matters was down to Rosalind and her son Mathew, it was also agreed at meetings that a tough line should be taken in future on all ‘piracy publications’. This became a frequently used term by executives alluding to publications that had not been artfully manipulated by Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine.
A week after Agatha’s death the American publishers Doubleday and Company commissioned Gwen Robyns to write a biography about Agatha’s life. When Rosalind found out she urged family and friends to ostracize the biographer. Without hesitation they all but one complied with Rosalind’s wishes.
Gwen Robyns was shocked by the Christie family’s hostile response and refusal to cooperate with her. She had a proven track record of producing sympathetic biographies, and her discretion could be relied on, for she had written authorized accounts of the lives of Princess Grace of Monaco and Dame Barbara Cartland with her subjects’ permission and gratitude, later becoming friends with them. She had also assisted Margaret Rutherford in the writing of her memoirs at a time when the actress was suffering from severe depression and was not well enough to commit her thoughts to paper, but no one would have guessed this from the charming autobiography Gwen Robyns ghosted on the actress’s behalf.
Gwen Robyns told me: ‘I think you are very brave tackling Agatha Christie. I could not get an English publisher to touch my book. Publishers were frightened off by the family bringing an injunction. The Christies did everything to thwart people speaking to me.’
The only member of Agatha’s family who agreed to speak to Gwen Robyns was Agatha’s husband Max Mallowan. Her initial request for an interview was turned down, and it was only after a mutual friend intervened on her behalf that Max reluctantly changed his mind on condition she did not ask him any questions about his late wife’s private life.
‘The interview was a waste of time,’ Gwen Robyns recalls. ‘I was only allowed to ask him how Agatha wrote her books. He was rude and refused to answer the most simple questions. The dog Bingo barked throughout. In the end I said, “This is no good”, terminated the interview and left. I said in my book I had a delightful time interviewing him, but it wasn’t true. It never occurred to me until later that he was covering up his affair with Barbara Parker.’
Agatha’s daughter Rosalind was furious when she read Gwen Robyns’s account of her mother’s disappearance. Although the biographer was unable to account for what happened in the first twenty-four hours, she made it clear that she thought Agatha had set out to punish her unfaithful husband. ‘In her modesty she could not possibly have foreseen that once the powerful press got hold of such a story, an incident that ought to have remained private would be fanned up into a sensation. She had only one recourse and that was to sit tight until she was found and stick to her story of amnesia.’
In November 1977 Rosalind received a letter from Alexander Pettleson’s daughter explaining how he had befriended the writer at the Harrogate Hydro. He claimed to have sung ‘Angels Guard Thee’ while she accompanied him on the piano and later, as Mrs Neele, signed his sheet music. The letter provided Rosalind with an unpleasant jolt since it appeared to confirm her mother had been very much in possession of her mental faculties during her disappearance. Mr Pettleson’s daughter had previously offered the sheet music to Agatha’s publishers Collins, who turned it down on her behalf.
Agatha’s heirs were horrified when they heard that Kathleen Tynan had scripted a film about the disappearance. The original owners of the film, the Rank Organisation, dropped the property after serious objections were made about the fictional aspects of the film by Agatha Christie Ltd. It was also pointed out to them that since the writer’s first husband Colonel Christie had been a long-serving member of Rank’s board of directors it might very well show him and the estate in a bad light if the film went ahead. Rosalind’s satisfaction at killing off the film was short-lived because soon afterwards First Artists took up the project. Rosalind was furious at this unexpected development. In a letter she fired off to The Times, which was published in its 14 October 1977 edition, she objected to the film on the grounds that it attempted to capitalize commercially on her mother’s name, was being made without the consent of her family and was likely to cause them ‘great distress’.
What made the situation more fraught with anxiety for Rosalind and her family were the confusing reports that reached them while the film was being made. Agatha’s grandson Mathew Prichard vented his spleen by releasing several statements to the press. ‘We were never asked about this film, whether we minded if it was done or not. I think frankly it’s an imposition. I’m her grandson and even I don’t know the truth about the disappearance mystery.’
In a bid to prevent the film from being distributed, Agatha’s daughter Rosalind and Nan’s daughter Judith, under the auspices of Agatha Christie Ltd and with the support of the publishers Collins, fought two unsuccessful court cases in America. When Warner Brothers eventually released Agatha in 1979, there was a disclaimer in the opening credits stating that what follows in the film is ‘an imaginary solution to an authentic mystery’.
The lurid story-line suggests Agatha went to Harrogate following a car accident because she knew Archie’s mistress Nancy Neele would be there on holiday, when, in fact, Nancy spent the duration of the disappearance being sheltered from the press by her parents at the family home at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. The role of the American reporter Wally Stanton was especially created for the actor Dustin Hoffman after he expressed interest in working on a project in Europe. The film shows Agatha planning a dastardly revenge and contriving to commit suicide in such a way that her rival Nancy Neele will be framed for her murder. After Wally Stanton thwarts Agatha’s plot and saves her life, they have a brief affair before she goes back to her husband in order to divorce him and begin a new life for herself.
The film alleges Archie spent the night of Agatha’s disappearance with a fictitious friend, Captain Ran
kin, when, in fact, he was at Godalming Cottage with Nancy Neele and their hosts Sam and Madge James. The producers altered the story-line after learning from their attorneys that Madge James was prepared to swear under oath that this had not been the case and that the pair had never been under her roof together at any one time, despite the fact that Archie had been Sam’s friend just as Nancy had been hers. Madge James’s allegiance to Agatha’s daughter and the memory of Archie and Nancy boosted Rosalind’s confidence during her protracted legal battles with the film’s producer, but the lie was to no avail.
What the producers of the film did not appreciate when they invented the name of Captain Rankin is that the Christies had a Canadian friend who shared the same surname. Air Commodore Archibald James Rankin, who was called Jay by his friends, knew the Christies quite well in the 1920s, staying with them on several occasions. He liked both of them but realized it was not a happy marriage.
A little known fact is that Albert Whiteley, formerly of the Harry Codd Dance Band, had a cameo role in the film; some fifty-odd years after the novelist disappeared he recreated his real-life role by playing in the band and watching Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie dancing in the ballroom of the Harrogate Hydro.
The release of Agatha was a bitter pill for Rosalind to swallow, and she never forgave those who were associated with it. The film struggled to find an audience and disappeared swiftly from cinema screens. This was no consolation to Rosalind, whose one wish had been to safeguard her parents’ private life and prevent their memory from being ridiculed.